Luke 10 shares the account of the sending out of the seventy. Jesus sent these men “ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go”. Luke 10:1. He was on his way to Jerusalem and would travel through villages where he had not been before. The job of these seventy emissaries was to go to these places first and announce the coming of Jesus by giving people a preview of his work. Jesus warned them to expect resistance and rejection.
Jesus intends the same mission for us today. He wants us to go ahead of him and witness to others. Those we witness to may be non-believers, worshippers of other gods, those who have created their own belief system based on a combination of religions, or those who are simply indifferent. We may have doors slammed in our faces, we may be ridiculed, we may be politely dismissed. But Jesus tells us: “Whoever listens to you listens to me; whoever rejects you rejects me; but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.” Luke 10:16
The seventy were commissioned to tell others about this man, the Messiah, the son of God, who was walking the earth, healing, teaching, loving. We are commissioned to proclaim the gospel, about this man, the Messiah, the son of God, who walked the earth and died for our sins, who now sits at the right hand of God and lives in the hearts of all who accept him as their savior. Just as Jesus followed the seventy into the villages where they witnessed, so he will follow us into the hearts of those to whom we witness and who repent and trust in him.
Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves…Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has come near. Luke 10:3, 11
