Luke's Gospel

Luke chapter 10, we're going to be going through verse 1 to 24. Luke chapter 10 verse 1. After this, the law appointed 72 others and sent them 2 by 2 ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. He told him, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Go, I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals and do not greet anyone on the road. When you enter a house, first say, peace to this house. If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them. If not, it will return to you.

Stay there, eating and drinking whatever they give you for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you. Heal those there who are ill and tell them the kingdom of god has come near to you. But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, even the dust of your town, we wipe from our feet as a warning to you.

Yet be sure of this, The kingdom of god has come near. I tell you it will be more bearable on that day for sodom than for that town. World to you, Chorazin, woe to your bedsideer. For if the miracles that were performed in you have been performed entire and silent, they would have repented long ago. Sitting in sackcloth and ashes.

But it will be more bearable for tie and sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernum, will you be lifted to the heavens no, you will go down to Hades. Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. But whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me.

The 72 returned with joy and said, lord, even the demons submit to us in your name. He replied, I saw satan fall like lightning from heaven. I've given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy. Nothing will harm you. However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

At that time, Jesus full of joy through the Holy Spirit said, I praise you, father, lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned and reveal them to little children. Yes, father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my father. No 1 knows who the son is except the father, and no 1 knows who the father is except the son and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Then he turned to his disciples and said privately blessed are the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, but did not see it.

And to hear what you hear, but did not hear it. Fat a lot, we pray that you soften our hearts and help us see this wonderful word that you have, this life giving word, and help us see and experience all that you you have to say for us today. I'm in. Well, good evening and very warm welcome to you. My name's Chris Tilley.

I'm 1 of the members here at Cornerstone Church. It is good to see some some new faces that I've never seen here before. So, a really warm welcome to you. You are you are most welcome here among us. Please do by all means fill out 1 of these contact cards and feel free to hand it into myself or Ben, at the end of the at the end of the service.

I don't know, if you if you've ever noticed in the preaching at Cornerstone, but sometimes themes just keep coming up, and they're not actually planned by us. We don't sit down as preachers and go, we're gonna we're gonna get this thing across. It just seems to happen sometimes Steve Sim said it to me years ago that this just keeps coming up. It happened on Sunday. It was talked about with someone the other day and it happened in a youth talk and it's happening again because as I was preparing this sermon or I literally finished it and then I listened to Pete's sermons from last week and if you were here, last week.

He basically did the same sermon twice from 2 different passages with a very focused theme and point to it. And this is the same thing again. So clearly god's trying to tell us something. So clearly we need to listen up and question ourselves and examine where we're at with this. Let me pray and then we'll we'll get started.

Father, please help us. You know us all. You know you know where we're at. Please send your Holy Spirit challenge us to prick our consciences, to really assess, what what we need to assess about our own hearts and our own lives and our I'll love towards you and the lord Jesus. I'm in.

Alexander the Great is attributed with once saying I do not fear an army of lions led by a sheep. What scares me is the thought of an army of sheep led by a lion. While Alexander was getting at is that under the right leadership, even weak and average soldiers become formidable. What he didn't want to face above all else was another leader like himself or superior to himself another lion. He was already confident that there was no army in the world that was gonna go toe to toe with his men and come out on top pound for pound.

They were an army of lions led by a lion. And yet Alexander feared an army of sheep yet led by another lion. Why? Because in that scenario, sheep start to become lions, they start to take on the attributes of their leader. I've probably taken that illustration about as far as it will go without completely ruining it.

But you get the point weak things in the hands of a strong leader not only start to become like that leader, but they also highlight the true brilliance of that leader. And all the glory and praise, any achievements that those weak workers, those weak soldiers manage to to get is even more to the credit of the leader, isn't it? Because they never would have been able to do it without their lying leader. And that's largely what's going on in this passage, at least some of what's going on in this passage anyways. We're approaching the middle of the book of Luke at this point, and Jesus's ministries in full swing.

And he's been all over galilee, and he's also been to gentile areas. So the cities tire and side on, and he now has a reasonably large following. And he's approaching a large number of towns and villages. And just as we saw back in chapter 9, he sends out the 12 disciples now. He enlarges this a bit.

He broadens it a bit. He gathers together 72 72 and he sends them ahead of him into the towns and villages. And now our first point is going to be an army of sheep, an army of sheep. Now it might be a stretch to call the 72 that Jesus sent out an army. However, what the 72 represent is an army I don't know if you thought the same thing as me whilst we were reading through the passage, but what occurred to me is why 72?

What's 72 all about? That's that's a bit of a strange number. Is this is this just random Jesus? Is he just being a little bit weird? I'm just plucking a number out of thin air.

Well, surely not because there's there's reason and order to everything that Jesus does. What most scholars would agree on, what most bible commentators would agree on is actually this passage should be Jesus sends out the 70, but we'll we'll go with 72 because that's what we've got in our bibles. And what they what they say about the 70 is interesting. It is interesting. If you go back to the early parts of the Bible to Genesis 10, you have a list of gentile nations, nations that were not part of Israel.

They're not part of god's people. They're outside of the nation. And guess how many 70 70 gentile nations. Now, most scholars will link those 2 together and say, 70 to go out 70 gentile nations you start to see the picture. In numbers 11, a bit further on, Moses is struggling with the administration of god's people.

He's struggling with the preaching of god's people. He's struggling to to keep them under control. And so god says, alright, choose Guess how many 70 elders to help with the preaching, with the prophesying, with the administration of God's people, except in that passage, it's 70 plus there's 2 more guys that get tacked on l dad and me dad. So 70 plus 2 72. So you've got these guys that are set up to prophecy and preach to the entirety of god's people 70 gentile nations.

You see the picture. These guys are going out to preach the word to god's nation, which is no longer composed of just Israel. It's no longer just Israel. It's everyone. This is an early picture of the mission of the church.

That's what Jesus is driving at. This mission here is the church's mission. And the task is huge. There is always more work than workers available to do it. In verse 2, he told them the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

Ask the lord of the harvest therefore to send out workers into the harvest field. So we need more workers. We need more workers. What type of workers? Who do we need to go out and do this work?

What type of soldiers are gonna make up this army? Well, let me tell you plainly it's you. Not collectively, like I'm talking individually you and you and you and you and you, it's you. If you're sat in this room right now and you're a follower of the lord Jesus Christ, it is you. There's no getting around it.

Verse 3, Jesus says, ask for more workers, then he says, go. Go. I'm sending you. And you're sort of thinking, woah, hang on a second. You just said, ask for more workers.

I didn't think you meant me go and do the work. I just wanted other people to come and do the work. And Jesus says, no, it's you. You're in the spotlight. You you are on the spot tonight.

It's you that he's sending out there. And he says, go and get on with it immediately. Not tomorrow. Don't don't delay. Don't wait for next week.

Don't wait for next month. It's right now. This mission starts now here as we're hearing this and reading this passage. If you were here last week listening to Pete Sermon, you would have heard about the cost the cost of following Jesus, that there's no time to delay. That following Jesus supersedes all earthly commitments, even family commitments.

People were saying, Oh, but I need to go and, say goodbye to my family. No. I'm sorry. But if you go back, you're just gonna you're just gonna live out your life there. Oh, but I just need to, you know, see out the last bit of my dad's life.

No. You're not gonna follow me if you're always gonna be putting something else in front. What it means is you have to go now. It's immediate And as we heard last week, that means to go out and preach. And people won't like that.

But some will listen. And the urgency is highlighted here in this passage as well, isn't it? Travel lights. You don't have enough time to pack. Look at verse 3.

Go on sending you out. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals. Don't take anything with you. Those things just gonna slow you down.

You know, it's funny. We've just been away on holiday and packing in in the Tilly household is a is a is a very funny thing because happens in 2 very different ways. My my style of packing is I grab a bag. I'd grab the same bag every time. I walk around from room to room ago, I need some shorts, chuck them in.

I need some t shirts. Chuck them in. I need loads of underwear. You can never have enough underwear. You never know what might happen.

Go into the bathroom. You just grab a load of stuff. You might need it. You might not. Who cares.

We'll find out along the way. Plunk the bag down. Done. Brilliant. Great.

Bernadette, it is a very different kettle of fish. She's gonna hate me for telling you this. There's well, it's inconceivable. I I can't get my head around it till this day. There's lists and sometimes there's even lists of lists.

There's a master list with sub lists. But before anything happens, before anything gets ticked off the lists, there's an even more important job that needs to take place. The entire flat must be cleaned. My mom does this. My sister does this.

I don't understand this at all. So why would you clean the whole flat when you're not going to be in it or 2. It's going to be dusty by the time you get back and you're not there to enjoy the cleanliness anyway. Try and explain it to me a thousand times and I'm not going to ever understand it. Anyway, I don't know why I've got onto that, but, travel light.

You don't need to take that stuff with you. It's actually a distraction. It's gonna it's gonna weigh you down. You the more stuff you take, the more stuff you have to worry about, the more stuff you have to remember, the more things there are to lose, the more cares you have, just go. Go.

I mean, I'm not even wearing socks tonight. Just go. Go and do it. He said, don't take your sandals. I thought, okay, fine.

I won't take my socks. You don't have time. Get on with it. Don't worry about these things. They're just gonna bog you down and get in the way.

Don't greet anyone on the road. I love this. Don't greet anyone on the road. Walking down the road. Hey, Chris.

I'm sorry. Bye. You can't you don't I don't have time to stop. You're not important enough. I have an important mission to be getting on with.

I don't have time to talk to you, but it's really, no. No. It's not that important. No distractions. You need to get to where you're going.

Stay on point. Stay on mission. There's a harvest to get in it's ripe, and you do not have time to get sidetracked with secondary, unimportant issues that may arise on the way. Seems to me we can spend an awful lot of time as Christians talking about unimportant things that are secondary issues that really do not matter what on earth have they got to do with spreading the gospel? Very easy to get sidetracked, isn't it?

Now you might turn around at this point and say, but why me? Why me? I'm not very good at this sort of stuff. I can't preach. I'm not a preacher.

I I I'm not trained to do any of this sort of stuff. I can't speak very well. The words they tumble out of my mouth if they even tumble out at all. I'm actually terrified of the thought of what you're suggesting because remember, it's you, it's it's all of us in this room, Don't you know how big and scary the world can be? And Jesus says, yeah, I I do know.

I'm not looking for the biggest, shiniest individuals to go out and do this work. In fact, I'm looking for the opposite. I'm looking for lambs. Little lambs. What good is a lamb for anything apart from eating?

We had a lovely lamb on holiday. That's about all they're good for. They look nice. They're fluffy, but they're pretty useless at everything else. Let's face it.

What do they do? Just lambs? And I'm gonna send you out as though you are lambs going out amongst wolves. Lands amongst wolves. Suddenly, this sounds even less appealing, doesn't it?

This is a dangerous task. The world is full of wolves. This is dangerous to your health, perhaps, dangerous to your career may be dangerous to your bank balance, dangerous to your time, dangerous to your friendships. Jesus isn't promising this is going to be easy. He isn't promising people are going to like it.

In fact, he promises quite the opposite. He says many are gonna hate you when you preach. Many will hate you and turn away from you when you start preaching about me. They'll hate you, not just what you preach, but you as well. It's gonna be hard That's a hard thing to take.

We know about persecutions that Christians face the world over, don't we? We read it in Barnnebus magazines, We have persecuted church, slots, Susan Drayer prayed about it this morning, but that recent IS attack on Christians But if we're honest, the scariest walls we're ever gonna have to face in Kingston are the walls of rejection, perhaps derision, more likely than not just complete and utter indifference. In comparison, they're not that bad, are they? It's not too hard and ask. Let's get back to the point though.

Who can share the gospel in Kingston? Anyone every person in this room meets the requirements to do that. In that, we are all totally boring and ordinary. We're all nobodies in this room. None of us are anything.

If we're gonna, like, let's face it. We're nobody. We're a room full of nobodies. We're like helpless little lambs, if we're gonna be honest with ourselves. So we all meet the entry requirements to join this army of sheep, don't we?

None of us have anything in life which is so important that it supersedes this work. None of us really have any special set of skills or training, and none of us really require that to do this work. Lambs are fine. I'll take lambs. There's no special tools.

Travel light. Don't worry about it. Just go. Get on with it. In fact, the less stuff you take the better.

All of us meet these requirements. None of us are that important. So why? Why do it this way? Why using an unimportant nobodies who are of no consequence who aren't really very good at much, or because god uses the weak things of this world to shame the strong and bring them into submission.

And you see this all the way throughout bible history. Think of Moses Go and preach to pharaoh Moses. The most powerful man on the planet, but I'm not very good at speaking. Fine. Take Erin with you then.

But you're gonna do it. You're gonna go to him and you're gonna say let my people go. I guess he wins out in the end. Is it Moses? No.

God does though. Through Moses. Take Gidion, midianites, invade hordes of them. They're like locusts covering the land. Big, scary, dirty, hairy, midianites.

And Gidian, who's the youngest of the smallest tribe, the most weedy, not a warrior, is the 1 that god chooses. The lowest of the lowest. Gideon, raise an army for me, razors an army. It's too many men gidion. Get less men halves it.

Less men goes down. Less men, 300. Against tens of thousands, maybe hundreds, a huge army. Okay. We're gonna make the odds even harder Gidiom lose the weapons.

What? Lose the weapons, take some trumpets, you'll be fine. Low and behold, who wins the day? Is it Gideon? No.

It's god. He uses Gilean's weakness, David and Goliath. Shepard boy against the giant expert warrior. Elijah and the prophets of Baul, the last prophet against many soaks the altar, lights it on fire. God wins.

Jesus, a lamb to the slaughter. 1 man. Against the entire religious establishment of the day, the Roman Empire. God uses the weak things of this world so there can be no doubt as to his power and glory. There'll be no case that can be made by us saying that we are the strong, we are the mighty, we're the ones who've done these things on.

We're actually pretty good. So that pride doesn't start to come up in us. Our pride is not in ourselves. No, it's so that we trust in god and his strength, not our own strength. That's a disaster.

And so that hopefully people will see this as well. This is all designed so that people might turn away from human things and to the living god, turn away from this world and to the promise of eternal life in paradise. Which can only be had with a relationship with the living god, the leader of the sheep. So yeah, we go out like lambs amongst wolves because that's how god came to us. Like a lamb amongst wolves the living god sent his only son.

The spotless stainless, sacrificial lamb who takes away the sins of the world. So that's how our mission looks. We go about it. In the way he went about it. That's what the army's made up of.

Little lambs, pathetic, not very good. Jesus raises them up. They have a lion at the head though, the lion of Judah himself. The mission briefing then, so what did the lambs do? How did the lambs go about this task?

How are they to accomplish their mission? How are they to gather in the harvest? Well, Jesus gives them some very specific instructions. If you look at verses 5 and 7, he says when you enter a house, first say peace to this house. If someone who promotes peace is there, your peace will rest on them.

If not, it will return to you. Stay there, eating and drinking, whatever they give you. For the worker deserves his wages do not move around from house to house. So first go house to house. If they welcome you, stay there, eat drink, whatever they give you, don't move around, stay minister to those people.

If they welcome you, if they sorry, if they don't welcome you or I guess by implication, remove their welcome and stop feeding you, then get up and leave. Move on. Go from town to town as well. Pick it up in verse 8. When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is offered to you, heal those that who are who are ill and tell them the kingdom of god has come near.

When you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, even the dust of your town we wipe from our feet is a warning to you. Yet be sure of this, the kingdom of god has come near. If they welcome you, again, eat and drink whatever they give you, stay there, healing the sick, preaching the word of god to them. If a town does not welcome you however, then wipe the dust off your feet. The dust off your feet.

We have nothing to do with this town, this town, and this people have nothing to do with god's kingdom. We're not even gonna take the dust from your town with us as we go. It's a sign and warning against them. But preach the word to them anyway before you move on. They still need to hear it.

So to break that down and to put it rather bluntly, spend time on those who are willing to hear the word. By contrast, do not waste time on those who reject the message. Sounds harsh, doesn't it? But there is a hard principle for ministry, and I actually think this is 1 of the hardest things about people and ministry and Even if you work in an office place, you're you're you're a manager in any capacity, you'll you'll know this in that setting as well. You cannot build a ministry around people who simply reject the message.

You can and should build a ministry around those who are willing to hear the word and are eager to grow and want to be with you. Invite everyone The invite is inclusive. It goes out to everyone. You invite them all to come and join god's kingdom. And when they accept the invite, you stay with them.

You eat with them. You share life with them. You you you you share kingdom life with them. So that they grow and you can you can continue to minister to them. But But when people reject the invite, what can you do?

Move on? You have to move on. As they reject, so they are rejected, they've had the opportunity, they've heard the message, and they chose to ignore it. And yet we know that we don't forsake the lost. We don't just forsake the lost, do we?

Just because someone rejected the message once doesn't mean they're always gonna reject it. That's not what Jesus is saying. He wants us to urgently go into the world and spread this message far and wide. And you cannot do that if you get bogged down in a fruitless spot. You just can't.

You don't have the time. The workers are few as it is. Why would you keep going over the same ground that's not producing any harvest? You just can't do it. Do the same thing in sales.

You don't keep on banging on the door or someone who ain't gonna buy. It's pointless. You move on. See if you get a sale somewhere else, a bit of a crude illustration, I know. Same thing, like I've already said at managing people.

I've had situations in the past where there was a guy who knew it all but there was other stuff that he needed to know. There was another guy who was absolutely rubbish, but he wanted to know. He wanted to grow. He wanted to learn. So I absolutely invested in that guy, couldn't invest in this guy, wasn't interested.

Didn't wanna hear anything I had to say. Well, he left. He upped and left. The other guy, well, we really tried with him. He left anyway.

In the end, you can't win them all. But you have to invest where there's a desire for it, don't you? For sure, keep people in your prayers. People were praying for me family members for a decade, a decade before I came to Christ. A decade of prayer, That's hard work.

Did they have time to chip away at me every day though? No. No. They didn't. They had much more important fruitful task to be getting on with amongst their own churches where there were people who were desperate to be fed.

So they had to get on with that. Would they even have been welcome to sit with me every day No. It would have annoyed me and almost certainly embittered me against them. I I would have been hardened by their constant nattering in my ear about this god thing and Jesus and whatever else they were saying. But did they share the message with me?

Yes. Did they then move on to more pressing matters at hand? Yes. Had they fulfilled their obligations to me though? Yes.

Had they done the task that Jesus had set for them concerning me? Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. They had, and it was fruitless at the time.

So they kept on praying. Kept on looking for opportunities and god gave them those opportunities. And they took them again when they came around again. Let me put it in a in a cornerstone context for a second. Someone I've been thinking about, I mean, how do I explain this?

And the the best way I can explain it is like mirror commitment You mirror commitment. So if you're trying to decide, can I invest in this person or not? Who do I invest my time in? Only got a limited amount of time. I can't invest in everyone.

So who do I invest in? Were you investing the ones who are there and you're investing the ones who want to grow? The ones who are coming to you saying, I wanna do a 1 to 1. Brilliant. Okay.

I mean, I'll try and do a 1 to 1 with you. If not, I'll find someone else to do a 1 to 1 with you. I wanna join a home group. Speak to Phil Cooper. I wanna I wanna grow in this way.

Fine. We can sit down and we can we can look at how we can do that for you. On the other hand though, if you've got someone who sometimes they're here, sometimes they're not, when they're here suddenly they want to do everything, but then you don't see them again for a couple of months. How can you really commit to investing? Because you the commitment doesn't seem to be there vice versa, so you can only commit as much as they've committed themselves.

It's a mirror. Do you see see what I mean? It's a hard thing. It's a hard thing trying to figure that out. There's many in the room who are more experienced at that than I am and will know more about that than I do.

But you share with those who welcome the message and you share and move on from those who reject the message, there's nothing more you can do. The bottom line is, as Jesus says in verse 16, is anyone who listens to me, listens to you, listens to me, whoever reject you rejects me, but whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me. Basically, if people reject you when you preach about Jesus to them, they're rejecting God. You are god's mouthpiece. And for those who reject, there is great suffering at the judgment.

You move on with sorrow. It's hard to move on. It's hard once you've shared a message and people reject it, especially hard when they're people who you love. I dread to think what I must have put family members through. It must have been hard.

Think of my mom, praying from the other side of the planet year after year. It's with sorrow, but you have to move on You can't get bogged down. There's a big old harvest to go and get in. And for those who reject Jesus pronounces woe. In fact, he states that the more that you've seen and heard the message and yet still reject it.

The greater the downfall, the greater the downfall payment is gonna be on judgment day when he returns. So look, Chorazin, Beth Saeda, Capernium, These towns saw the majority of Jesus's miracles. They heard tons of his preaching and yet many did not repent. And follow Jesus. Many didn't repent and follow Jesus.

They saw firsthand and still weren't following. I'd wager that there are probably people among us, maybe even tonight at Cornerstone who hear this message almost week in, week out. And yet are not really committed to following Jesus yet. If that's the case for you, then beware. For many people who have seen far less and heard far less than you have put their faith in Jesus and now live their lives for him, beware because your greater rejection is bringing on you an increasingly unbearable judgement.

Check out 13 and 14 if you wanna know what I'm talking about. So when this comes to Kingston, when this comes to Kingston and our mission for Kingston, Pete was talking about this last week and there was a line that really stuck with me and I don't know if it's stuck with you. I hope it has. It was the thing that haunts him it was the thought that keeps him awake at night. Has he, have we just created a nice middle class church with just enough zeal to convince ourselves that we're good.

But are we actually fulfilling this mission in Kingston? Are we Are we really going out there to the lost? Are we really putting ourselves on the line? Are we really intentional in our conversation. The students on campus, the shoppers on Kingston High Street, the people in your workplaces, How many opportunities?

How many friendships? How many relationships? How many hours do we waste? How much of our lives do we just go about it as if this mission isn't even happening? How serious are we?

So that's the mission brief. It's urgent. It's uncomfortable. It's dangerous. But everyone who follows Jesus is expected to participate, not just expect of the commanded go with an exclamation mark, go.

All of you go. Because even though you go out like little lambs, you're led by a lion who himself became a lamb. And gives you some of his strength to do this. He grows you. So they went.

70 went, the 72 went. And brings us on to our final point and that's war stories and victory celebrations. They go and they come back. And they're full of joy. Absolutely buzzing and full of joy because of the mission they've just been on.

They've been healing people casting out demons, preaching the kingdom of god to those who will listen, warning with great sorrow, those who will not. And they've had a taste just a taste of their leader's power, they've been as as they've been going about this work. And the result for them is pure joy Of course, it is. They've been seeing demons submit to them. They've been seeing people repent and turn to the lord Jesus Christ and be forgiven of their sins.

This is an incredible ministry that they've been able to be a part of. You see it in verse 17, the 72 returned with joy and said, lord, even the demons submit to us in your name, to which Jesus turns around to them and says, Yeah. They did. I saw Satan himself fall like lightning from heaven. Whilst you were out proclaiming and growing the kingdom.

In other words, he suffered a spectacular defeat. You see, Alexander the Great, like Satan was terrified of an army of lambs led by a lion. Satan's scared of the same thing. He may seem to hold all the cards. He may seem to have all the power.

He's he may seem to be the dangerous 1 He's got an army of lions, well wolves, if you wanna put it in the context of this passage, but he's a sheep. An army of wolves led by a sheep, a coward. And I fully expect that every time He reads this passage. He hears it preached. He sees the church living it stepping out in faith getting on with the mission and proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ crucified so that people can be forgiven of sin so that they're no longer under his yoke And they can now know God as father.

When he sees that happening, he quakes because he's a coward. And his army quakes with him. And he falls like lightning because he knows that in the end, he's toothless gutless and absolutely defeated defeated because in the end, whilst it brings the 72 joy that demons are submitting to them, Jesus says, the more important thing here is that their names are written in heaven. Did you know that? Your names are written in heaven.

If you're part of this army of sheep, if you're part of this mission, your names are written in heaven. As are the names of many others because of this ministry. And once your name's in heaven, there is nothing that Satan can do to change that. So even the sheep soldiers of the lion now have some measure of power over his evil lies and schemes. He falls from the heavens like lightning at the feet of little lambs.

And because all of this, Jesus breaks out in his own praises, his own joy. He breaks out in a prayer of joy to his father verse 21. At that time, Jesus full of joy through the Holy Spirit said, I praise you father, lord of heaven and earth because you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and revealed them to little children. Yes, father. For this is what you were pleased to do.

You see it again, don't you? The weak to shame the strong, the humble to oppose the proud lambs, over wolves, little children over the wise and the learned. This is a pretty thinly veiled dig from Jesus at the Pharaces and the teachers of the law and the religious establishment. They're not suitable for this work Jesus says. Their pride stops them from being apart.

They already think they're somebody. They already think that they're important and better than everybody else with all their years of learning and reading the ancient scriptures with all the rituals and laws, they keep so carefully so they can stand up and show everyone how good they are. Those people, Jesus is happy to exclude. He's happy they're excluded. He praises god that they're excluded.

They're not welcome. Why? Because they are not gonna bring god any glory only themselves. That's his chief concern. The proud will only glorify themselves.

That's why they're not included in this mission. That's why they can't be part of this army of little lambs. On the other hand, the unlearned, the little children who are unspoilt by learning the ordinary, every day, common people fishermen, the tax collectors, the sinners, the ones who know their sinners, they make up the 72. Who have just returned from this mission, and Jesus is happy they've been included because their weakness shows god's glory. His power is perfected in our weakness.

They haven't made any claim that they're wise. In fact, quite the opposite. They know they're nothing. They know they're nobodies They know they're inconsequential people. So anything they achieve can only be to god's glory.

1 Corinthians 1 26 to 29 explains this better than I can. For consider your calling brothers and stirs. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. None of us in this room, I don't think. Not many were powerful.

None of us in this room are powerful. Not many were of noble birth, definitely none of us of noble birth in here. But god chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise. He chose what is weak in the world to shame shame the strong. God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not to bring to nothing things that are so that no human being might boast in the presence of god.

Do you see the point? Even by worldly standards, none of us were really anything when we were first called by Jesus. None of us hold any power none of us are mega mega rich to the point where we can influence anything on a national stage or or or an international stage, not even a local stage. We couldn't really even influence anything in King them. We hold no power in a worldly way.

We're nothing, and yet god uses people like us to reach out to nothing people like us, to make them the most important people in all creation, children of god. It's quite amazing, isn't it? And the so called wise and learned people will never understand why that may be the case. In their minds, if there is a god, then surely he would use the very best people for his purposes. Surely he would use the leading politicians of the day, the very best scientists, the best philosophers, the people with the most money, the movers and shakers of the business world, but instead he uses ordinary people like you and me for the grandest of all tasks, saving souls for eternity.

It's peculiar, isn't it? But that is what pleases god. But posing and humbling the crowd, lifting up the week and downtrodden to dizzying heights. Also that his name would be rightly glorified as it should be. And all of this is accomplished through his son and through his son alone, verse 22, all things have been committed to me by my father.

The only, no 1 knows who the son is except the father. And no 1 knows who the father is except the son and those to whom the son chooses to reveal him. Do you see what he's saying? The only way we can know God as father is by trusting in Jesus because only Jesus knows the father and can reveal him to you is fairly straightforward. So when the 72 go out, the word on their lips as they were growing the kingdom, the thing that brings them the most joy the thing that's gonna have them just bursting at the seams is Jesus.

As they sat and ate and drank, with anyone who would accept them in the towns and villages, they always had to turn the conversation to Jesus as they relax after dinner they would have been talking about miracles that Jesus did and what they'd seen Jesus do. As they went for a walk in the call of the morning or in the evening, they they would have shared the words that Jesus preached That's how they won souls for heaven. By telling everyone about how amazing their leader was, Sheep become formidable because they adore the lion like leader. It's all about him. It's not about them.

It's about him. And the kingdom grows as they talk about him and are just bursting at the seams with pride for him, not for themselves, for him. That you can all talk. Right? Everyone in this room can talk.

I'm pretty sure I've not met anyone in this room who can't talk, haven't talked to all of you, but I'm pretty sure I've seen you all talk. And you can all walk. Right? I mean, some better than others. Some can go further than others, but we can all get about We can walk, we can talk.

We can go out into Kingston. We can go out into workplaces. It's not hard then. You don't need to have gone to a theological college. In fact, as far as I can tell a lot of the time, that does more damage than good.

You don't need any of that. You know about Jesus. You know who he is. If he's your lord and savior, you'll love him. And you'll be able to talk about him in such a way that, look, we all preach.

I mean, I I've just finished watching chernobyl. I'm gonna be preaching about that all week. It's a brilliant program. Dean dryden was preaching about it on Facebook the other day. He was just telling everyone how amazing this show is.

We all preach. We're all good at preaching. Shouldn't be so hard to preach about Jesus then, should it? The thing that we love the most the thing that should be the most important, the person in our lives who's just above all else. It's not hard.

All of you can do it. We can all do it and it brings joy and it brings blessing. Finally, there's a blessing. You are blessed, Cornerstone. We're all very blessed.

We're incredibly blessed because we've seen and heard all these things. We've seen the whole history of the church. We've seen it grow from weakness, from nowhere, subvert an an empire, the Romans, We're blessed because we get to be part of that story. We get to be part of god's kingdom building. You're blessed because you get to be part of tearing down Satan's kingdom.

You're blessed because you've had all these mysteries revealed to you. You've got the whole of god's word here. I mean, these guys didn't need have that, not concisely put together like this. We have preaching, week in, week out. It's such a blessing to be part of this army, to be part of this mission to go out and do these things.

And it brings joy, but above all, we're blessed because if we're part of it, our names are recorded in heaven. So again, it brings us to the point of what are we doing? What are we doing? Are we really doing this mission? If you if you haven't, I would say go back and listen to Pete's to sermons from last week.

It's really striking, really challenging stuff. Each 1 of us in this room, individually and collectively, we need to question what are we doing with this thing that we've been entrusted with, are we really taking it out that we really love the lost. They're walking off the edge of a cliff in their millions day by day. The harvest is ripe. It's It's so ripe.

So ripe it might rot. Are you willing? Are you able? Yes. You're all able.

Are you all sent? Yes. You're all sent. Do we need more workers? Yes.

We need more workers. You know how we get more workers? Don't know if you noticed. It's interesting because Jesus sends absolutely everyone out and then says, you need more workers. How are you gonna get more workers if everyone's already gone?

Well, the answer's obvious, isn't it? It's the people who are converted and brought into the kingdom by the workers that went out into the harvest field in the first place. Kingdom is not gonna grow if the workers don't go, and we're not gonna get reinforcements if the workers don't go. Let me pray. Father, we praise you for your saving works.

We praise you for the lord Jesus. We praise you that he is our leader. He is our savior. He is our king. We praise you that that even though we are pretty rubbish, I mean, there's nothing to us really.

You picked us. It's it's it's a mystery, but you picked us and you grow us and you send us out and you you sanctify us, you you you mature us. Father, we pray that we would be willing to go at your beck and call. We pray that we would have a heart for the lost here in Kingston. We that we would eagerly be going out there.

We pray that in whatever our daily context is that are our Christian life, our mission doesn't just stop on a weekend, doesn't stop on a Sunday. Isn't confined to just once or twice in a week, father, but we pray that that we're just bursting at the seams of pride for Christ and our love for him, and that's just infectious for people around us. Help us to work at harvest fields. Father, we pray that you would raise up more workers to help us in this as well. We pray that through all of this, your name would be glorified and the name of the lord Jesus Christ would be held on high, amen.