UK 10{Verse 1. The Lord sending the seventy, two by two, before His face into every city and place, whither He Himself would come, marks another step in His path. He feels and knows that the heart of man rejects Him, though come in grace to them, but His untiring love will not cease to minister where need comes before Him.
Verse 2. Therefore said He unto them, "The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He may send forth laborers into His harvest."' Thus He enlists their hearts' interest in His own interest toward a needy world, though it is opposed to Him.
Verse 3. "Go your ways: behold I send you forth as lambs among wolves." They must be so to be His suited messengers. A lamb cannot fight for itself. It is not a wolf fighting with wolves; they must take suffering at the hands of those whom they came to bless, if they serve after His pattern.
Verse 4. Dependence is to mark them. "Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes." And they were not to spend time on salutations by the way. Devotedness to their mission is seen here.
Verses 5-9. Their reception, or rejection, would be the test of those to whom they came. If the house was friendly to the Messiah, whose servants they were, they were to share its hospitality as His laborers, and not go from house to house, but to eat what was set before them, and to heal the sick, and announce the kingdom of God as come nigh to them.
Verses 10-12. Tell the responsibility and condemnation of those who refuse Him.
Verses 13, 14. Assume that these cities had already rejected Him. Great wickedness had been in Tire and Sidon, but they were not so hardened as the cities favored by the Lord's teaching and works.
Verse 16. Puts them as representing Him. To receive them was to receive Him, and the Father who had sent Him. To despise them was to despise Him and the One that sent Him. How blind were the mass of the people to this.
Verse 17. The seventy returned again with joy, saying, "Lord, even the devils are subject unto us through Thy name." They were elated because of the power put in their hands, but the Lord directs them to what was higher and better.
Verses 18-20. He speaks anticipatively, "I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Satan is to be cast down, it is written, and it will come in God's time. As yet, like Job 1., Satan presents himself as a servant before the throne of God. Not in the abode of the saints. And we know that "the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." Rom. 16:20. The power and protection of their Messiah was in their hand, but in this they were not to rejoice, but in the new truth He now presents-"but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." This new blessing was theirs, and brings an altogether new order of things-a place in heaven, instead of a kingdom on earth; to know God as our Father, instead of subjects of the King.
Verse 21. "In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit." How significant! Outward rejection, inward joy in the Father's love and purposes.
And He gives thanks to Him as the Lord of heaven and earth, that not to the wise and prudent, but to the babes this revelation was given. It was the Father's will and He bows implicitly to it, and is in full fellowship with Him in what He is doing.
Verse 22. In this verse the mystery of His person is brought before us; we cannot comprehend it. We hear Him say, "All things are delivered to Me of My Father; and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father." "The Father only Thy blest name Of Son can comprehend.”
He can reveal the Father to us, and this, blessed be His name, He has done, and brought us into the children's place: our portion with and in Him, fully entered into when the Holy Spirit had come. (Rom. 8:16).
Verses 23, 24. The disciples now have the place which (in vain) prophets and kings had desired to see. The One whose coming had been so much the subject of Scripture, was now on earth, had come at last, and though rejected by the many, their eyes and ears were open to see and to hear Him, but privately. not publicly manifested, as when every eye shall see Him. May we now have our eyes anointed to more fully discern all that is of Him, and the ways of God He has so perfectly displayed.
(Continued from page 328)
(To be continued)