Stand Sunday: Luke 10:1-20 SERMON NOTES

The Local Church’s Strategic Life on Mission

Today is Stand Sunday. We emphasize the need in our city, state, and nation for foster care and adoption. 

What I want to do today is let the Scriptures speak to us not just about the needs represented by Stand Sunday, but also about the overall missionary task of the local church. 

What Luke 10:1-20 tells us will apply to foster parents, potential foster parents, global workers, local ministry engagement, gospel sharing, intra-church ministry, and innumerable other works the local church can engage in.  

As we re-tool and re-plant and focus on the mission and the essentials of UP/IN/OUT, we want to make sure in everything we do that we get on mission and be on mission the way Jesus instructed us. 

In  1 Corinthians 2:2, Paul gave us the sentence that summarizes Jesus’ teaching here in Luke 10:1-20 on how to do the mission his way. 

1. 1 Corinthians 2:2 (ESV) For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
   1. The content is the gospel.
   2. The strategy is the gospel. 
   3. The tactics/method is the gospel. 

Jesus tells us what gospel work is and what it tactically looks like. We are going to see essence and practice. 

It’s in the Manual, so let’s take a look. 

Jesus’ mission is glocal. 10:1

1. 72 (likely 70, there are some textual variations) is a look back to Genesis 10 and the table of 70 nations of the world. 
   1. The table of nations sets the stage for God’s missionary call of Abraham to reach the nations with the good news. 
   2. Jesus employs this strategy in the local work of his Messianic mission to not only be effective; He also employs it to tell us that the global and local are intricately meshed. 
   3. To be sent local leads to the global work. 
      1. Domains!!!!
   4. The orphan crisis is global, and our local work necessarily leads to global realities. 
      1. TBRI global is a reality that is mobilizing right out of Restoration Rome. 
      2. The local work of the kingdom can lead to the global work of the gospel. 
2. Jesus sends the whole church. 10:1
   1. Aposello – sent, distinct from “Pempo” – sent 
      1. The distinction is that Apostello is sent on a specific mission. 
      2. If the Lord had only Apostello’d the 12 in Luke 9, we might have reason to believe that only specially called and dedicated clergy have a call to mission. 
         1. But the Lord did not leave us that wiggle room. 
         2. He follows Luke 9 with Luke 10 in which he “Apostello’s” a band of “others” who are just normal folk.
   2. Jesus sends everyone.
      1. Jesus has sent and released the entire church to every domain of society. 
3. What if the whole church was the missionary?

We go in fellowship, never alone. 10:1

“He sent them in pairs”

1. This is where what Andrew and Jessica does is so vital. 
   1. It helps family units not have to tackle the challenge of fostering and adopting alone.
2. Jesus sends his mission team out in pairs. 
   1. This is theological and practical. 
      1. Theological – God is Trinity and God operates in fellowship, and we, his image-bearers, are wired to be on mission in Trinitarian fellowship. 
      2. Practical – There is effect, courage, and accountability when we are on mission together. 

Make the work about Jesus not simply about the work. 10:1

“Every town and place where he himself was about to go”

1. Jesus sent them ahead of every place he was about to go.
   1. These disciples were sent in preparation for Jesus’ personal activity, so it was not about their work primarily.
   2. Their work was all about Jesus’ redemptive work that was coming. 
      1. They had a healing and announcing work to do that would point to the good news of the coming kingdom of Jesus Christ, the new creation reality of the “breaking in” kingdom. 
   3. Everything they did was to point to Jesus. 
      1. The entire “tenor” of Luke 12:1-20 screams dependence on Jesus as the One who sends, supports, and makes all the pre-work effective for his work of renewal. 
         1. Everything we do does not exist for itself. A ministry is never an “end”. 
            1. Every single work is a means to the end of seeing and savoring more of Jesus, and it is Jesus who makes it move and makes it effective. 
            2. As a result, ministries come and go and should evolve. What remains steadfast is the One a ministry exists to  promote. 

There is abundant work, so pray for more workers. Don’t take on more work. 10:2

1. As we live on mission the first observation we should see is that there is way more than can be done by just one person or one team of people. 
   1. Cities, states, and nations are large, and people are aplenty. 
2. Determine to not take on more than you have the capacity for. 
   1. Receive the blessing of limits.  
3. Rather than do more that others should do, commit that time to pray for more workers. 
   1. As Jon has been coaching me for years now, if there is an empty box in the organization, leave it empty. 
   2. If you fill it, no one will see the need and depend on you beyond what is healthy and sustainable. 

Go as directed, and accept the risk of vulnerability. 10:3

1. Living on mission to make disciples comes with the inherent risk that the initial work may fail. 
2. Living on mission to make disciples means that easy life and abundance and comfort may not exist. 
3. Living on mission to make disciples means that often we get to be pioneers who seek the good of others rather than benefactors who receive the fruit of the pioneers. 
   1. Know that there is reward stored up in the eternal kingdom for such work. 

Believe the Lord will supply needs for the work, yet have an urgency about the work. 10:4

1. Later the Lord is going to tell them to prepare supplies for the work and take them, but on this particular assignment, they were to just go and receive what the Lord supplied. 
   1. How do you know when to carry supplies and when to not carry supplies? 
      1. It’s totally practical. This assignment was a short-term and local assignment, so their need would be less, and they were to go as directed and receive from the Lord what they needed. 
         1. This is a command to believe in and trust in God’s supernatural means. 
      2. There are going to be longer and more intense assignments in which circumstances will require them to do some pre-work and planning, and they are to work a good plan, and still depend on the Lord. 
2. “…greet no one on the road.”
   1. This is the urgency.
   2. This sounds rude, and yet Jesus uses the precedent set by Elisha for his fellow worker Gehazi in 2 Kings 4:29. 
      1. Jesus is addressing a strategic bypass of socially lengthy customs of greeting. 
      2. To this day, in parts of the world, it is not uncommon to hold a handshake for a long time that for us is uncomfortable, and exchange lengthy greetings, blessings, inquiries, instructions, etc. 
      3. This is not bad, but it certainly could hinder progress.
         1. In this instance, the Lord instructed urgency and allowed them to bypass this culturally lengthy greeting process. 
   3. In this instance, urgency trumped lengthy greetings. 
      1. There are times we need to let urgency cause us to bypass some culturally slow processes, and times we may need to slow down and work within the framework of where we are. 
      2. We need discernment and instruction from Holy Spirit in those moments. 

Give away the tangible blessing of peace to those who receive the message of peace, and determine to commit to the work even if a person of peace is not present to receive the message. 10:5-7 (The declaring that God’s peace rests on that home)

1. “This peace is God’s peace brought through the mission and ministry of the seventy(-two) as they proclaimed the good news. This “peace” is not a feeling of ease or contentment but an objective reality. It is a synonym for the messianic salvation and its attendant blessings, referred to in 1:79; 2:14; 7:50; 8:48; Acts 10:36. Paul spoke of such peace as being the result of justification (Rom 5:1).” – Robert H. Stein, Luke, vol. 24, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 305.
2. The only way for this to make sense is for you to experienced it. 
   1. When you are getting after the healing and proclaiming work in public, and you are invited to a place, and you discover there is one who has or receives the peace of the gospel, there is a blessing of tangible peace over the relationship and dwelling you bring to it. If you discover there is no one of peace there, you may be welcomed and stay, but that tangible peace and rest are absent even if is cordial and even friendly. 
      1. The kingdom of God carries a tangible peace. 
      2. We don’t speak of the “blessing” of using words and actions over people in our tradition a lot, yet the Scriptures speak of blessing others with our words and actions. 
      3. We would do well to seach the Scriptures more and learn this tangible gift we carry with the gospel. 
         1. Life and death are in the power of the tongue.

Be adaptable and culturally appropriate. 10:8

1. Learn to adapt to your surroundings, and don’t stand out in unnecessary ways.
   1. We should minister the gospel in ways that allow us to learn how to communicate the gospel and live with kingdom values inside the place we are called to serve. 
      1. This takes time and intentional self-education.  
      2. Work at Restoration Rome does not happen like FCA at Darlington. 
   2. The gospel works deliberately. Listen to the Lord’s parable:
      1. Matthew 13:33 (ESV) 33 He told them another parable. “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven that a woman took and hid in three measures of flour, till it was all leavened.”
      2. Learn to get down into a setting and scatter the leaven of the kingdom in such a way that it works with maximum effect. 

Heal and preach the good news of the kingdom of God. 10:9

1. Jesus gives us some very important work to do, and it leads up to the apex of the mission contained in verse 9. 
   1. Heal – make right what the curse of sin has caused to be broken.
      1. This is the essence of domain engagement at its finest. 
         1. This is not necessarily pronouncing healing and seeing crazy things we can only imagine. God does those things. 
         2. The very essence of healing here is providing wellness where there is sickness. It is providing order where there is chaos. 
            1. Where we bring help and alleviation we are bringing the order of the kingdom. 
   2. Say – “The kingdom of God has come near.”
      1. This is a gospel proclamation. 

For those who refuse the good news, there is judgment. 10:10-15

1. Part of our kingdom proclamation is the gracious warning that judgment awaits those who will not come freely under the reign of Jesus. 
2. The fact that there is good news necessarily implies there is bad news. 
   1. That bad news is that God will rightly judge all those who do not receive Jesus.

When you speak the good news you are God’s mouthpiece, and reception or rejection is not personal. 10:16

1. Don’t take it personally when someone rejects the message. 

You have the power of the kingdom available. Do not rejoice in that power. Rejoice that you are citizens of the kingdom of Heaven. 10:17-20

1. This is another affirmation that It’s about Jesus, not our ministries. 
2. Our rejoicing is in that Jesus has saved us not the work he has given us to do. 
   1. There is nothing wrong with enjoying the work, but we don’t find our identity in it and we certainly don’t idolize it. 

How do we respond?

1. We do what Jesus said. 
2. We worship.