At the close of Luke 9 one comes to the Lord Jesus, saying, “I will follow Thee.” And He says, “Do not you see how the villagers have treated Me? If you will follow Me, you must take part with One who has not where to lay His head.”
Another comes: “Suffer me first to go and bury my father.” With a wonderful sense of the dignity of His ministry the Lord says, as it were, “One fellow creature may do the office of the dying to the dying, but go you and do the office of a living Saviour in the world.”
The Lord carried with Him the sense of His ministerial glory. Paul had it in the vessel going to Rome and before Agrippa. There he was, a prisoner in chains and degradation, and he stands and says, “I would you were like me.”
What consciousness of secret dignity in the midst of public degradation! “Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.” Go and do the Saviour’s business, the business of life, not of death, in a sin-stricken world.
Then in Luke 10 we are introduced to the commission of the seventy. They were to say, “The kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.” And they were to heal the sick. What a terrible verdict against this world—that God has to publish His kingdom in it! “Shake off the dust of your feet”—an insulting kind of thing to do. Ah! but the seriousness of the message required this.
Let them learn, if they receive it not, in the most awful terms you can convey, how they have jeopardized themselves.
The disciples return (ch. 10:17) and tell Him that the devils are subject to them. He immediately takes them into the book of Revelation, where not only is there power to cast out devils from this body and that, but He penetrates to where, in the majesty of His authority, Satan shall be cast down.
Have you been accustomed to think of Satan as being in heaven? We find him there in Job, in Kings, here, and in Ephesians, and in the Revelation we see him cast down from heaven.
Now which is dearer to your heart at this moment, your relationships or your circumstances? The Lord puts these balances into the hands of the disciples: “You may have power on earth, but it ought not to be so dear to you as your family place in heaven.”
Did it open Adam’s mouth when he was made lord of all around him? No! It was not opened by a sense of property or power; it was opened when he got relationship—when he got Eve. Property ought to be nothing when compared with affection.
So the Lord says to the seventy, “Rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” See how the Lord falls into the current of their joy for a moment. Then the Lord looks up to heaven and rejoices there (vs. 21).
I do not know that the Lord was ever happier than here, save—yes, let us tell it for our comfort—when a poor, believing heart gave Him meat to eat that the others knew not of (John 4).
The Lord here gave Himself to the disciples. They returned with joy, and He entered into their joy and swelled it out.
J. G. Bellett (adapted from Notes on the Gospel of Luke)