Chapter ten of Luke begins by saying, “After this,” thereby connecting it with the words and events of chapter nine. Luke writes, “After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others (possibly seventy) and sent them on ahead of Him two by two into every town and place where He Himself was about to go” (10:1). This is quite similar to what we saw taking place in the ninth chapter, when Jesus “sent messengers on ahead of Him… to make things ready in advance for Him” (9:52a,c). With the sending, Jesus included instructions, saying “Do not carry a money-bag, a traveler’s bag, or sandals, and greet no one on the road” (10:4). This sound to us like rather unusual instructions, but it is possible that Jesus wants His disciples to be distinctive from other wandering teachers in those days. He added a demand that once they find a hospitable response from a household, that they stay in that one house, and “not move around from house to house” (10:7b). Again, without getting too bogged down in details, suffice it to say that this will continue to set His disciples apart. Ultimately, they are to realize that they are there for a single mission, which would be to “Heal the sick in that town and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come upon you!’” (10:9)
They were to go out and preach the Gospel. The coming of the kingdom of God meant the arrival of the Messiah. It meant that the long night of exile and oppression was coming to an end, which was portended by the healing of the sick. It meant that the Lord was at work, redeeming His people. This was to be the sum and substance of those sent by Jesus. Though these that Jesus then sent out were to limit their ministry to the house of Israel, it is very much like that which comes at the end of Matthew, where Jesus says, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (28:19a), which would include informing all nations about the kingdom of God that had come in Jesus’ death and Resurrection, in that “all authority in heaven and earth” (28:18b) had been given to Him. Then and now, this message---the Gospel message---was a message of power, carrying God’s power to accomplish His missional purposes for His world and His people in this world. That’s what the Apostle Paul believed, and to that end, he wrote some of the most beautiful words ever penned, making the declaration that the Gospel “is God’s power for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16b). Jesus’ demand that this message of the kingdom be preached, along with the appropriate response to the response of those that hear and possibly reject the message, stands up as a daily challenge as to whether or not we truly believe the message and in the power inherent within it.
As we consider these things, it is incumbent upon us to always, always, always historically contextualize Jesus’ words and actions as presented in the Gospels so that we may better understand them and apply them in our own day. In that time, people will have seen actions such as these and heard words like this. Neither the mode of preaching nor the message was entirely new, either in the Israel of Jesus’ day or in the world into which His disciples would later travel. We can know that the method of preaching was not new, because Jesus had to make sure His disciples looked different from all of the other traveling preachers---thus the restriction on the bags and sandals and greetings, along His insistence that they not move around from house to house. The cultural familiarity with the practice that Jesus’ disciples were to undertake probably has a hand in the Apostle Paul referring to the foolish method of spreading the Gospel of God’s kingdom that had been established in Jesus (apart from the apparent foolishness of the message). You see, God did not ordain a new practice that would somehow make it easier to preach the message of the Gospel of Christ. He did not give a new tool that would make the Gospel’s gaining of attention a much more simple task. He took something familiar and imbued it with the power of the Resurrection.
In addition to a familiarity with the method, the message of “The kingdom of God has come upon you” would not have been unfamiliar. Though it held particular and incredibly significant meaning to those in Israel, not only was it the case that Jesus’ disciples would not be the first to go out heralding the arrival of a messiah, and thus, the arrival of the kingdom of God, but it was also the case that this was the same message that Caesar’s representatives carried into the world that he had conquered as well. Those that heard this message of the kingdom of God, whether inside or outside of Israel, would be familiar with the “gospel of Caesar,” which was, among other things of course (as the Caesar cult aided in the spread of imperial propaganda), that he was lord of all and the savior of mankind, could easily be set forth as the “kingdom of the son of god has come upon you; and you do not need to feel conquered, as Caesar extends his realm of peace and security to you.”
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