Listen, Do, Reflect — Luke 10

0:00 Let's start out with Luke 10 verses one to 20. I'd like to first read the whole thing. I'll be reading a new American standard. You're welcome to follow on in whatever version you have. Now after this, the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them in pairs ahead of him to every city and place where he himself was going to come.

0:21 And he was saying to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go, behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no money belt, no bag, no shoes and greet no one on the way. Whatever house you enter, first say, peace be to this house.

0:50 If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him, but if not, it will return to you. Stay in that house eating and drinking what they give you for the laborer is worthy of his wages. Do not keep moving from house to house. Whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat what is set before you and heal those in it who are sick and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you. But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out into its streets and say, even the dust of your city which clings to our feet, wipe off and protest against you.

1:31 Yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come near. I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida. For if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, occurred in you, they would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

1:55 But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades. The one who listens to you listens to me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects the one who sent me. Verse 17.

2:20 The 70 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them, I was watching Satan fall from heaven like lightning. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will injure you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven. This passage has a lot to say about discipleship, about how we go about missions, about what it's like to follow Jesus, and to become an increasingly better follower of Jesus.

3:04 I'm... I was just thrilled when I found out this passage was falling to my lot to preach on. It's a great passage. My first observation is that this wasn't the 12 that we're talking about. Jesus, and and we rightly give a lot of attention to how he trained the apostles, how he walked with them for what, three, three and a half years, something like that, preparing them to to take the take the baton when when he was ascended to his father.

3:39 But you know, not everybody is maybe suited for leadership training. Not everybody is going to do that is what I mean. But just about everybody needs to be trained. Excuse me. So that's why I appreciate this passage.

4:15 There's there's there's people that have been following around, following him around, listening to him teach and now he picks 70 of them, divides them up into groups of two, and sends them out to all the places where he's going to go. They have a message to take. They have some practical instructions from him. Then when they come back, starting in verse 17, there's a little bit of debriefing that goes on. You learn a lot in debriefing.

4:46 Now what was the message they had to share? It's a little bit... It's not super obvious here. Right? You have to kind of tease it out, but notice that in verse nine, it says, heal those who are sick and say to them, the kingdom of a God has come near to you.

5:04 The kingdom of god has come near to you. And then in verse 16, the one who listens to you listens to me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and he who rejects me rejects the one who sent me. So there is a message about a kingdom and about a king. Something about a king and a kingdom. Now when the 70 were sent out, that was a little bit special.

5:30 We have a different chart, a slightly different charge today, don't we? They were sent out because they needed to sort of almost like John the Baptist prepare the way a little bit for Jesus to come. They were to say the kingdom of God has come near you. What is the kingdom of God? Now there's a lot of discussion about this.

5:51 You can find a lot of opinions about this among Bible scholars, but I would keep it sort of simple, and I would say the kingdom of God exists wherever God is recognized as king. If you meet somebody who recognizes God as king, who recognizes God the son as king, then you've come near the kingdom of God. And if you recognize him as king, you're in the kingdom of God. Yeah. So that's the kingdom of God.

6:22 So this message, the kingdom of God has come near to you because we too here in your city, two of the 70 sent out, recognize him as king. And by the way, the king is coming here. Be ready. He's gonna come. And just to prove that that this kingdom has something to it, it's...

6:43 This is not just idle words. Jesus gave them the power to heal, to bring healing about. Now, I personally am not one who believes that that miraculous healing is not for today. I think it can happen today. I think it does happen today.

6:59 I don't think it happens with quite the frequency that it would have happened here. At least that's my observation. But, Jesus especially wanted, his... Those he sent out, those disciples of his to be listened to, and so he gave them the power to heal various diseases and told them they should do that, and they did. So now I I would submit to you that, you know, if you compare the 70 and their message to today, the message that we need to take is the gospel.

7:31 And I think every Christian should be trained at least that much to be able to share the gospel coherently with someone else. And if if you feel you can't do that, I would recommend you find one of the elders here, one of the leaders and say, hey, you know, could you help me learn how to share the gospel? I think that that would be an excellent thing for you to do. Everybody should be able to do that. So there is this...

8:00 There are these levels of discipleship. There are the there are the 12 that Jesus trained very intensively, and then there are the 70 that we have here. We have this pattern for discipleship. You listen to something, you do something about it, then you debrief it later in terms of how you get trained as a disciple. And the debriefing part, as I mentioned, we'll get to that later, is in 17 to 20, versus 17 to 20.

8:27 Then there are a whole bunch of principles here on the practicalities of discipleship. These applied especially to the 70 set out, but I think many of them apply equally today. First first one is they were sent out two by two. Verse one, he sent them in pairs ahead of him to every city where he was going. You need to go at least two by two.

8:55 It's it's not that you can't share the gospel one on one, that's fine, but generally speaking if you're going far from home, need at least a little bit of fellowship. You need you need somebody to walk alongside you in the work. It's it's it's just an important principle. I found this to be true, and especially if you're going to be going out of your home culture, out of your home area where you have a family, you have support networks, if you're going out of your culture into a different different country, a different culture, you really need somebody with you. Your gifts alone probably aren't enough.

9:54 And that that second one, that was Luke. He was a physician. What a great guy to have with you toward the end of your life. And and he was Luke. He was the guy that wrote the gospel of Luke and and and the book of acts.

10:08 He was a great observer and recorder. I I would love to have Luke with me. But Paul needed somebody else too. He needed Timothy to come to him. We need fellowship.

10:20 We need fellowship in the work that we do. It's important. Okay. Verse two. And he was saying to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

10:31 Therefore, beseech the lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. We need to be praying that wherever wherever there seems to be an opportunity for harvest that laborers show up, and we need we need to pray for that. We're asked to do that. I don't think... I think that applies just as much today as it did before.

10:51 And if you're willing to pray for it, you also need to be willing to go. God may not call you to go somewhere else or he might. Whether he calls you to go or to stay, you need to be willing to do what he asks you to do. Verse three, go, behold, I send you out... Go.

11:17 That first word has this, in my Bible, has a semicolon after it indicating it's, you know, really tied to the first verse, the verse ahead of it maybe. You know, pray that the Lord would send these people out into the harvest. And by the way, go. You, go. Going is important.

11:36 Training is good. Training is important. You need to be properly trained, but don't spend too long training. There comes a time when you need to go. There's work to be done.

11:47 The harvest doesn't wait. Going, and then, behold, I send you out as lamb... Lambs in the midst of wolves. There will be opposition. There's always opposition.

12:05 That's going to happen. You should expect that. And in the face of it, just try to be careful and wise. You you you don't have to have a martyr complex and and try to get in trouble and try and and try to get beat up or whatever might happen to you. There are some places in the world where this is a quite a reality.

12:26 Places in Pakistan, India, well actually everywhere there's some kind of opposition I believe. But our response should be more like lambs than wolves. Not violent, not disrespectful, but loving. Jesus said in another place, we are to love our enemies. That's radical.

12:54 That's really radical. When you see some of the things that get done to turn around and be able to love your enemies, that's being like Jesus. Now this next verse, I feel a little bit of conviction of. Carry no money belt, no bag, no shoes, greet no one on the way. Some would say no extra pair of shoes or whatever, but you know, on this trip, I'm violating all of that.

13:25 I've got like four credit cards, little bit of cash in my wallet. I think I carried a backpack and a suitcase. I have three pair of shoes total. And I've been greeting people. You know, but I believe what the real intent of this passage as he was giving instructions to those 70 is you need to use your time well.

14:05 Yeah, they can give a quick greeting, but not a long greeting, not anything that takes up so much time that they don't get to the job they need to do. And we need to be focused. I think of this as a verse that speaks to focus of ministry. Sometimes, I think many of us get called to do things that maybe are a little bit outside of our gifting, that stretch us a little bit. That's okay.

14:34 But as much as possible, remember the main thing God wants you to do. Keep the main thing the main thing. Okay. Focus. Verse five.

14:56 Whatever house you enter, first say, peace be to this house. If a man is pea... Of peace is there, your peace will rest on him. But if not, it will return to you. You know, I know people in the country that I was in, they...

15:10 I knew some some foreigners who tried to practice this. They would... You could go from village to village, you know, you you would often have a like a valley and you'd have maybe a stream of water through it and then you would have different villages up the valley. Could almost often you could see one village from the next village from the village you were in. It might take a 10 walk as you walked up the valley.

15:33 And so if they went to a new place, they would look for somebody who might be a man of peace. That is somebody who could take them under their wing, treat them civilly at least, Maybe make introduction for them. If they wanted to spend the night there, maybe make it... Help make arrangements for them. If you find somebody like that in your ministry, let them fulfill that role.

16:00 They may not even be a believer. But if they're a person of peace, it's good enough. Bless that person. Peace be to this person and and trust that that will happen. And and if if in fact you don't run into a person of peace, I've known I've known friends that would go to a village and they say, that village is really bad.

16:25 They just really seem to be a lot of evil in that village. To be a stronghold of Satan. They just kind of ran us off. Well, then you get run off. Go to the next village.

16:35 Don't take rejection too personally. Okay. Whatever city you enter and they receive you, eat what is set before you. This is kind of important, especially when you go to a new culture and you're eating, you might be asked to eat things you're not used to eating. Obviously, if you have some serious food allergies or some some things you just can't do, then you should tell them that.

17:05 You say, I'm sorry, but you know this is a this is a medical issue for me. But in general, to eat what you're given. I've eaten some crazy stuff And it it does make a difference. I... Can I tell this story?

17:22 I hope I won't offend too many people, but my my... I had a a partner. We were doing some language survey in a particular place. And we we we finished up and we came back and we had to go talk to the head of the the government agency that was sponsoring what we were doing. So we were taken in to his office by the people, some of the people that had gone with us.

17:55 And of course they knew sort of what Americans are like and what they're... And they said, yeah, yeah, know, we went we went to all these different places and did survey and these guys, they ate dog two times. It was a credit to us. You gain something when you eat food that you're given. You gain something there.

18:24 I don't know how much it happens. If anybody disagrees with me, you can have at me later. But but I do believe God is in the business of doing miracles even yet today, including sometimes miraculous healing. Okay. Let's see.

18:45 Next, where are we at here? Say to them, the kingdom of God has come near to you. Yeah. I think I've already addressed this. No one it's important for people to know that that you're sharing something of eternal value.

19:08 The kingdom of God has come near you because nobody is ever really guaranteed a second chance to hear. Many people get more than one chance. Maybe you've had more than one chance, but nobody is guaranteed... Necessarily guaranteed a second chance. So so they need to know that this kingdom that they, especially these Jewish people, had all been waiting for had come near to them.

19:34 They needed that to be said very clearly that if you reject this message, you're you're kinda not doing yourself any favors here. Same today with the gospel, even more so with the gospel, if not more so. You're not always guaranteed another opportunity to have the holy spirit tug at your heart. Let's see. Then he goes in 13 to 15.

20:04 I won't have as much to say about, woe to you, Chorazin, woe to you Bethsaida, for if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago sitting in sackcloth and ashes. Now one of the things I get from this is that God not only deals with individuals, but in some sense, he also deals with people as groups. In some sense he deals with people as groups. Because he's talking here about Korazen and Bethsaida, and this was a concept that was very familiar to Jewish people in the Old Testament. You see a lot, If you read it with that in mind, you'll see a lot of how God deals with people as groups as you go through.

20:46 Part of that I think is because if there's one person has a particular kind of sin in the group, that can affect the whole group. It can end up affecting the whole group. It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you. And Capernaum, same thing. And then verse 16, the one who listens to you listens to me.

21:11 The one who rejects you rejects me and rejects the one who sent me. You need to go out as ambassadors. The 70 were sent out as ambassadors of the king. Ambassadors tend to be confident, not arrogant, but confident. And if you're not confident right now, it's okay.

21:34 Just keep practicing and you'll develop confidence. Sometimes it takes a while, but look for that confidence to develop and don't be afraid of it. Not arrogance, not pride, but confidence. Why? Because you represent a very important person.

21:52 You come representing not yourself in all of your weakness. You come representing Christ in all of his strength. Be confident. Be an ambassador. Now 17 to nine...

22:40 When when Satan sinned and took with him angels who became demons then, or if it's referring to something yet future when Satan will be ultimately and finally defeated. But it doesn't really matter for the purpose of this passage which one he was referring to. What's important here is he was saying, look, don't don't rejoice that you find find that you have some power, some delegated power here. Rejoicing in power can result in pride. That's what happened to Satan.

23:13 You need to rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven, that you are the recipient of grace, that you've been saved when you didn't deserve it. You are a sinner, and you've been saved. And your name is recorded in heaven. It's like a citizenship role, the roles of citizenship. Your name is recorded there as a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

23:40 Now I want to talk a little bit about this business about being a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. You know, in this world, in this physical world, are approximately 200 countries. The United Nation recognizes a 193 member states, two observer states, that gets you to one ninety five. And if you really want to, you can add a few more places in that maybe their autonomy is questionable, but you could get to almost 200. There are 8,100,000,000 people in the world.

24:18 99.95% of those people are citizens of at least one of those nearly 200 countries. There are 4,400,000 or point 05% that are are considered stateless. And there... Those people have a sorry. They're...

24:35 That's a sorry lot to be in. That's not a good place to be. But never mind those for right now. Because what I really want to emphasize is that in the spiritual realm, it's different. The picture looks really different.

24:48 There aren't 200 countries. There are exactly two kingdoms. Not three, two. And everybody is a citizen of exactly one of those two kingdoms. No dual citizenship, no stateless people.

25:06 You're either a citizen of the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of Satan, sometimes referred to in scripture as the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. We all start out in the kingdom of darkness. Now I don't know every heart here. I don't know where you're all at, and so I I feel compelled to let you know that even though you might think there's a third possibility, scripture says there isn't. Only two kingdoms.

25:36 Kingdom of light or kingdom of darkness. And if you're in the kingdom of darkness, you wanna change your citizenship. You wanna do that. There are great advantages, no disadvantages. You can...

25:48 Instead of an eternity of punishment, you can have an eternity of blessing. Now in this world, if you want to change your citizenship, it can be a challenge. I know, my son just married a national of a different country. And she has now applied for a green card, fairly recently made application for a green card. They just recently got married.

26:15 A green card is a permanent resident status. And that's like the first step. You have to do that, and then after that, you can become... You might... If you want to, you can apply for citizenship and become a citizen.

26:28 Now, this this process, just to get the green card takes about fourteen months and it cost the application fee is about $3,000. Kind of expensive. I mean, for somebody like me, it's kind of expensive. Citizenship in the kingdom of heaven is different. It can happen instantaneously.

27:01 Nobody had... Nobody could afford it. So the king of the kingdom of heaven, Jesus Christ himself, paid that for you by dying on the cross for your sins. All you have to do, the only thing left for you to do if you don't already know him is to accept that citizenship, to accept him. You enter into a relationship with him, you say, yes, I recognize you as my savior king, And then you will be transferred into the kingdom of heaven.

27:33 Your name will be recorded in heaven as well. I encourage you to do that, and I encourage you not to delay. I would be happy to talk to you about that later on if you wanted. There are a number of other people who would be happy to do that. I see Andy here, he'd be happy to talk to you.

27:52 Roger would, I, you know, I can think of... You... Maybe you know some other people here who would be happy to talk to you about that. That would be the most important message for you. If you don't know him already.

28:10 So my suggestion would be, I I don't know at what point in this message as we've been considering this scripture, different ones of you might have felt a little tug at your heart that maybe the spirit was saying something to you. I don't know what that... It might have been something about going. It might have been something about getting trained or training others. It might be it might be in fact this matter of changing your citizenship.

28:35 I really don't know. But whatever it is, I would encourage you to follow the following plan. Decide what you're going to do about it or or decide that you need to do something about it. And then before you leave here today, or at least before the day is over, talk to somebody else about what you've decided so that they can maybe ask you about it later. Just a gentle...

28:58 Provide for yourself a gentle accountability to make sure you don't let it just slide. Because we need to be doers of the word, not just hearers of the word. Well, that's my urging for you today. Let me just give you a little bit of a of an update on what's happened in my life. As you know, you know, I had forgotten that I had actually been here since we came.

29:29 My first wife Linda and I came back in 2018 from the country where we were living. As many of you know, we came back rather suddenly. It was almost like an evacuation. It was a little bit difficult for us. We didn't quite realize how difficult until later on.

29:51 We didn't know how much we were impacted until a few months down the road. Thought, you know, I'm not getting very much work done here. I feel like something... And in fact many of my colleagues who had similar experiences about the same time had the same experience. It was just a little bit hard for us to get our feet under us.

30:08 I think I've gone gone by that now. I'm still working for in this realm of bible translation. I'm on a different team now. We had to change... If I was here in 2019, I I believe I hadn't changed projects yet, but I had to switch.

30:29 We couldn't continue in the dialect we were in. We didn't have anybody to work with, so my team Ed and I transferred to the most closely related dialect to the one I had been working on. And we're on a little bit larger team and it's a very healthy project, I feel, compared to what we were doing before. We have a mother tongue colleague that is really a special person, very evangelistic. She...

30:59 And she also encourages others. She actually went... She went to a different area to encourage some other translators in a different dialect. And these local translators invited her and some of her friends to go with them sightseeing in the area they were in. So they went to this tourist area, and our mother tongue colleague and her friends started sharing the gospel with the shopkeepers in the area.

31:29 And the locals were kind of surprised at that. They said, know, we've only ever seen foreigners do this. You know, there's a nearby country where this is okay to do, but you know, we have some more restrictions here in this country. And our mother tongue colleagues said, well you know actually we... It's not the political environment that constrains us, it's we who constrain ourselves.

31:53 If you believe that you have freedom to share, you can just say it. And so she encouraged them and and they seemed to to take the encouragement well and and and perhaps they too will be a little bit more bold in the future. It's a challenge there in that place because it is true that there could be some persecution down the road for them. They're aware of that, but they're willing to take that risk for Jesus' sake. So anyway, I'm working on that project and and it seems to be going well.

32:30 I'm not actively doing the translation part myself. I'm doing some other things around that because I'm not as familiar with that particular dialect. But I do know something about the overall language. So it helps me to... I mean, my knowledge of the overall language helps me to do some of the things I'm doing that take some burden off the people that actually are doing the translation part.

32:55 It's being part of a team. Just as I imagine you have... You exercise some teamwork around here. Right? Somebody might clean the place, somebody might prepare some food, other people might speak from here or whatever.

33:10 Then in about three and a half years ago, as many of you know, my first wife passed away rather suddenly. We were in Charlotte, North Carolina visiting our commending assembly and Linda just... She had an aneurysm in her brain that we didn't know about. It blew. One minute she looked perfectly healthy.

33:29 At the beginning of the minute she looked perfectly healthy. By the end of the minute she was fighting for her life. And in fact she died shortly thereafter. For those of you who know him, Bill Longstreet died in... Well, she passed out in his living room and she ended up passing away a few days later in the hospital in Charlotte.

33:53 That was quite a shock. You know, in retrospect, you know, there's different ways to go. Some people have a lingering illness, some people go quickly. As far as Linda was concerned, I'm really glad that she got to go quickly. If any of you knew Linda, I don't think she would have done well with a lot of infirmity for a long time.

34:18 It just wasn't who she was. So so I'm... I rejoice that she's with the Lord now. Then a little bit of time went by and I ended up dating and in fact marrying one of Linda's good friends from Faith Academy in The Philippines. When Linda...

34:36 They were high school classmates, born the same month actually. Risa, Risa you can raise your hand. So you need to get to know Risa, it's a lot more fun to get to know her than to get to know me. She's really fun. She's a nurse in the student health service at Wheaton College and finds that that to be a real ministry.

34:56 She's never worked anywhere as a nurse, she says, where she can minister to the whole person, spirit as well as body, the way she can there. And so that's her ministry. That's one of her main ministries. Marching on and so I'm gonna I'm gonna stop. If you have questions you wanna ask me about what I'm doing these days or how things are going, we can maybe talk about them later.

35:41 Thank you so much. We praise your name. Lord, I I would continue to ask that if at any point your spirit has spoken to some heart here, that that person would be... Would joyfully embrace whatever you're saying, even if it might be a little bit uncomfortable in some ways, and and in that way, grow in the Lord. Because Lord, it's just such a wonderful privilege to grow and to become a little bit more like Jesus.

36:11 So so I pray that you would encourage them to do that, that they would take action on anything that you may have spoken to them about. And we ask for this blessing in Jesus name. Amen.