Expanding the Ministry
This morning, we are continuing in Luke's Gospel, chapter 10. So Luke chapter 10, and we begin in this passage a transition where Jesus is going to expand his ministry from beyond the 12 to other faithful disciples.
In 2023, I had the privilege to go to West Africa with Luke and Craig and with Terrence and with Andy and Karina. And we spent several days there, a little over a week, as we were in a Muslim-majority country there to train pastors and to share the gospel in the streets of their capital city.
As we walked around from person to person, just talking to whomever we could, and to be honest, it was easy in some ways to talk to people because, A, we had a translator who was very bold and willing to talk to anyone. But also, because of the color of our skin, we attracted attention. People wanted to know why us two Bobs were there and what we were doing in their streets and in some of their alleyways.
As we went around with the hope of the gospel, there were some people who would quickly dismiss any mention of the name Jesus because they were Muslim. Others would listen to the gospel and they wanted to engage us with either questions or objections and point us to their Muslim faith. But there were a few others, and I believe best my memory serves me, only one or two people who expressed genuine interest in what we were sharing, who asked deep questions that showed an awareness of their sin and an interest in what we were presenting. Those, we hope, were followed up with by those who were serving there full time.
But I was reminded, and I believe our whole team was reminded, that when we share the gospel of Jesus Christ, we can be assured that people will respond. Not everyone will gladly receive the gospel. A few will even oppose efforts to share the gospel. Most people will simply be indifferent or uninterested. But a small number will want to know more, and they among them will become believers of Jesus Christ. They will receive the gospel for what it is, for good news unto their eternal salvation.
Therefore, as believers, we must keep going and declaring the hope of Jesus. As Luke is recording his gospel, he's showing his readers and us that we can have confidence in Christ, that we can be convinced that Jesus is who he says that he is, and we can carry the name of Jesus to all who will receive him.
As Luke was recording his gospel, he's showing the expansion of this message of good news. First, it was Jesus himself who started his public ministry of teaching, and he was going around announcing the kingdom of God. He was preaching with power. He was performing miracles that were healing the sick and raising the dead.
Then in Luke chapter 9, Jesus commissioned his 12 disciples with this same ministry. He sent them out to prepare the way for his victory over sin and death. He began chapter 9 by commissioning his 12 closest disciples to represent him all around Galilee. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to perform miracles. And they went from place to place proclaiming Jesus. And they received a mixed response just as Jesus had. There were some who were eager to hear the message and became followers of Christ. But there were others who opposed them, who rejected them and even drove them out of their towns.
Commissioning the Seventy-Two
But now Luke starts chapter 10 by commissioning more than simply the 12. Now he's going to send out 72 additional disciples. He gives these men the same mission to preach the kingdom and perform miracles.
While Jesus' 12 disciples were in his inner circle, at the same time, he had been gathering a growing group of committed disciples. And it is from among this growing group that Jesus appointed these 72 to prepare the way for him in Jerusalem.
He sent the 72 ahead of himself to give people on the east side of the Jordan River an opportunity to receive and respond to the kingdom of God. These messengers of Christ would preach the peace of God through Jesus, and they would take his message from town to town and person to person.
It's only in Luke's Gospel that this particular mission is recorded, but it serves to show us that Jesus' mission was for more than simply him and the 12, but it was for all of Jesus' faithful followers.
Jesus equips these 72 in much the same way that he equipped the 12. And with this equipping, he instructs them and reminds them that his name will guarantee a response. As they go out to preach the kingdom of God and perform miracles in the name of Christ, people will respond both positively and negatively. So Jesus prepares them to go.
Sent into the Harvest
And the first thing that he does, and my first point this morning, is that he sends them into the harvest. Jesus sends us into the harvest, in fact.
As Jesus prepared his 12 disciples and he patiently instructed them, he expanded his mission and ministry to include more and more disciples. Luke records that Jesus chose 72 others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go, verse 1. He appointed these men to be his representatives. They were authorized messengers who were declaring the kingdom of God in advance of his own ministry.
Jesus appointed these men probably in the last six months of his ministry because at the end of chapter nine, he's starting his way to Jerusalem, and that will come to culmination in chapter 19. This winding path that went from Capernaum down to Jerusalem through Samaria for Jesus and around Judea for the disciples would take several weeks and months to complete.
But as they went, they would go two by two, traveling and telling people about Jesus. As Jesus had begun his ministry in Galilee and sent the 12 disciples back there, now he's sending the 72 to a broader territory. He's sending them to Judea to preach the same kingdom, to perform the same kinds of miracles, and to expand his outreach and to declare his kingdom to more and more people.
Notice in this passage that Luke does not name any of the names of the 72 men. The mission that they carry out is far more significant than any of their individual identities. In fact, God uses faithful disciples both then and now to take the gospel into unreached places. The mention of Christ far outweighs the name of any one of his messengers. God wants us to point others to Jesus rather than gathering followers for ourselves. God is not interested in men or movements. He is alone the Messiah, and we declare him.
The Plentiful Harvest
Jesus sent the 72 disciples into Judea expecting a harvest. This is why I said he sends us into the harvest. He told them in verse 2, "the harvest is plentiful." Plentiful means that many people will listen to the message and some of them will believe in Jesus. Therefore, Jesus' followers have much work to do.
A harvest does not wait for a more convenient time. When the harvest is ready, it must be gathered before it wilts or before bad weather comes. On my dad's side of the family, my uncle and my cousins are farmers, and they raise different cash crops in Kentucky. When it comes time to harvest, they do not have time to delay. They must get the crops out of the fields and into storage. If they don't do that, or if bad weather beats them to the harvest, then they lose an entire crop and thousands and thousands of dollars.
Jesus is telling the disciples that they must go into the fields for harvest because the harvest is plentiful. It is ready to be received, and the time is urgent. They must go with a sense of purpose, not delaying and going on their own timeline, but going on God's timeline.
Praying for More Workers
But since the laborers are few, Jesus says in verse 2, this task would require diligence, prayer, and urgency. The laborers must work urgently while the harvest is ready, but they must also be faithful to continue working until the harvest is complete. And then they must work prayerfully for more workers to join them in the harvest.
Jesus promises that he'll prepare more laborers to work alongside the ones that are already in the fields. So while the 72 disciples were going out two by two and working in the harvest fields of God's kingdom, Jesus told them to be actively praying for more workers. Notice in verse 2, he says, "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."
While these disciples were busy doing the work of ministry, preaching the kingdom, and performing miracles, Jesus reminded them that they should be asking God for more workers to join them. He didn't tell them to stay back and hold a prayer meeting for someone else to do the work. He didn't say start a prayer movement so that others would rise up to serve. He says work and pray. Do both simultaneously.
I have a plaque on the desk in my home office that says this: "When we work, we work. But when we pray, God works." The idea is we must work, but when we pray, God attends to our work. He strengthens it. He multiplies it. And he directs more people to join the work.
Jesus directs his disciples to pray for workers while they're preaching and performing miracles. The ministry was not about them and about their influence and how many sermons they could preach, how many times they could share the gospel, how many miracles they could perform, how many healings, or how many people that they would touch who were dying or dead. But instead, they were to preach the Messiah. They were to direct people to Jesus and encourage other people to direct people to Jesus.
When we're busy working on Jesus' mission, we also must ask God to provide more laborers to join us. Every one of us can pray for God to add workers who will proclaim the gospel. Prayer is what connects us to God's power, and it alone is what propels the work of evangelism and missions. We cannot do this work in our own strength or of our own initiative because eventually we will run out of energy and we will run out of ideas. Instead, we must humbly, boldly, and faithfully share Christ and watch God add to his kingdom.
Warren Wiersbe has observed this about people or Christians related to the harvest field. He says, "Too many Christians are praying for somebody else to do a job that they are unwilling to do themselves." That's a convicting statement. Too many of us pray, "God, send someone else. Take someone else out to share the gospel. Send someone to my family member. Send someone to my coworker. Send someone to my neighbor. Send someone to the mission field," but we are hesitant to be that someone. God is instructing these 72 disciples to be the ones who go and to pray that God would add others to their number.
Lambs Among Wolves
As Jesus is instructing them to do this, he gives them a clear-eyed sense not only of the urgency of the harvest field, but also of the dangers that they will face in the harvest field. Jesus told these hand-picked messengers that they would be like lambs among wolves. This comparison underscores the dangers that they would face on a daily basis and their need and dependence for his power.
God's servants would run into opposition from the world and the limits of their own strength would be ever before them. They would not be able to manage the mission alone and circumstances would show them their desperate need. When we follow Jesus and advance the gospel, we can expect wolves to oppose us as well. As lambs among wolves, we should not be surprised when Christ's enemies bite and devour us.
Wolves are God's enemies, and they're enslaved to their sin. They're blinded by their depravity. They oppose the gospel and they resist gospel messengers because they are rejecting God. Luke will summarize this, that Jesus says exactly this in verse number 16 when he says, "Whoever listens to you listens to me. But whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me."
As we go representing Christ, we are declaring the gospel of our Savior. And when people reject us, though we can sometimes take it personally, we can feel offended. We can even feel discouraged, we should be reminded that it's not us they're rejecting. They're ultimately rejecting our Savior.
When our church engages in evangelism and missions, the enemy actively works to undermine our efforts. I and other pastors have observed here at Milton and in other churches and other contexts that every time a church gets serious about prayer and sharing the gospel, Satan gets busy sowing discord in the church. He does something to stir up people against.
Havner used to say this: "Any man who takes Jesus Christ seriously becomes a target of the devil. But most church members do not give Satan enough trouble to arouse his opposition." It was a sobering statement written in a time when people were much more engaged in personal evangelism, when churches were much more committed to reaching the lost. And Havner said, "Any man who takes Jesus Christ seriously becomes a target of the devil. But most church members do not give Satan enough trouble to arouse his opposition."
Do you sense that you are a lamb among wolves? Do you feel opposition to your faith? Or do you simply go along to get along? Are you just the nice person in the office that other people like because you don't stir any waves or create any problems?
I'm not saying that we need to go into work and take advantage of our employers' time and the money they pay us and just become evangelists at the office. I also would not suggest that we need to become controversial or bombastic or rude in sharing the gospel. But I am saying when we offer the hope of Christ, when we declare the kingdom of God, people will reject it and they may even reject us. They may call us holy rollers. They may think of us as religious lunatics. They may consider us to be too zealous or too serious. And they might even marginalize us and write us off. We might become the outsider in the office rather than the insider. And yet, it's far more important to be counted among the insiders in Jesus than the outsiders of the gospel.
Traveling Lightly
So, while we are busy doing the work, we need to be committed to the work in spite of the opposition that will come. While we were in the fields doing the work, there is going to be difficulty.
So, Jesus further reminds and instructs the disciples to travel lightly. He says in verse number four that the disciples should not take a purse or bag or sandals and do not greet anyone. The idea is that they would travel in a way that they can move quickly. They didn't need money bags because God would provide all the resources they needed. They didn't need luggage or extra sandals. He wasn't saying go barefooted. He was saying only take the pair of shoes that are on your feet. He did not want the disciples to waste time along the way by carrying lots of luggage or worrying about how they would provide for themselves. Instead, he promised that he would provide for them.
Remember in his Sermon on the Mount, he said, "Give us today our daily bread." And these 72 men, just as the 12 disciples before them and others after them, came to know that God indeed provides the daily sustenance necessary to serve Him. But he also warned them not to waste time with lengthy formal greetings along the way. In Middle Eastern culture, it was common to have elaborate greetings where they would welcome each other. I don't know if it's parallel at all, but when we were in West Africa, they had a very long greeting process with tea that they would serve to us. And it took a long time to make the tea, but it was a kind gesture of hospitality. It was people saying, "Welcome to our country, welcome to our city, welcome into my home."
And Jesus is saying, don't take time for that. Simply come. Say your words, but more than that, proclaim the gospel. Proclaim it with urgency, that you don't have time for elaborate ceremonies. You must share the core message. Jesus was not asking the disciples to build social networks or to gather large community groups or to organize people. Instead, he sent them to proclaim his kingdom.
Jesus provides everything that we need in every generation to share the gospel. And the best witness both in the first century and in our own time is sharing our testimony, the way in which God arrested us, that he showed us our sinfulness and our need for his forgiveness. God sends ordinary Christians like you and me into his harvest fields every day. And when we go, we are to answer, or when we go, we actually are in answer to another believer's prayers for more workers. Think about that, that when you answer the call to go into the harvest field, you're not going on your own initiative. You're going because the Lord has called you, but you're also going because others have prayed that you would come.
God has given us the gospel and we must share it with people that God puts in our lives. There are people that you know that I will never meet. There are people that you will be introduced to that I will never have the opportunity to talk with. And yet there are people all of us can share the gospel with that will respond positively, that will receive Christ, that will repent of their sin and confess Christ as Lord. And think of this: there will be millions and millions of people in heaven that we don't personally know, that we will come to know because we'll have all the time of eternity to spend fellowshipping with each other. And it'll be incredible to see the networks of how this person's conversation led to that person's conversation and all the rest as we unpack the providence of God in our own story of salvation.
But in this moment, our responsibility and our opportunity is simply to share Christ. We don't have to go to seminary to be witnesses of the gospel. Seminary can help us and have more knowledge of the scriptures and theology and church history, but it's not required. We simply need to know Jesus. These followers, these 72, did not have seminary education. They were not advanced apologists who knew all the answers to every argument against the Messiah. Instead, they were simply willing followers, eager to go and announce the kingdom, to preach Christ and perform miracles with his power.
And as they did that, people responded. In fact, Jesus guarantees people respond. That's why he sends us into the harvest. And then secondly, he prepares us for their responses. He prepares us for their responses. When Jesus sent the disciples on their mission, he prepared them with what to say and how people would respond to them. Verse 5, "When you enter a house, first say, Peace to this house." By announcing peace, the disciples were declaring God's blessing. They were offering shalom, and the disciples came in peace, offering the kingdom of God. If the homeowner that they said this to promotes peace, verse 6, then their peace would rest upon them. However, if the person was not someone who was characterized by peace, that would welcome the peace of God, then he says the peace will return to you.
The disciples would not bless someone with peace if they did not wish to receive peace from them. God does not force his grace or peace on anyone. Nor can Jesus' disciples coerce people who do not want to receive the gospel. If someone refuses to accept the peace of God, then Jesus says they can move on. The idea here is that God has given us the ability to respond to the gospel. Though we certainly believe that God is gracious in his sovereign grace to choose us unto salvation, he also has given us the responsibility to respond to his grace by recognizing our sins with repentance and receiving his righteousness through faith.
If someone refuses this message, then we cannot twist their arm. We do not need to make threats to them or somehow cajole them into responding. We cannot guilt someone into heaven, but instead we offer them the hope of Christ, and that is enough. And when we do that, Jesus blesses some with repentance and faith, but there are many others who reject his peace. And they are people that he says we can move on from.
But Jesus, in this context, in this case, had already instructed the 12 disciples when they went into a town. Where to stay? He said, go into the town, look for someone who can host you and stay with them if they offer hospitality. He gives the 72 disciples the exact same guidance. They could receive free meals from their hosts as a part of God's provision for their daily bread. After all, he says, the worker deserves his wages. The work they were doing is God's work, proclaiming the kingdom and performing miracles. And the wages were their room and board, and that's all they needed.
The workers' wages included a welcoming, safe place to spend the night and food to fill their stomachs. When someone welcomed the messengers into their home, they were immediately to accept this hospitality. Jesus told them in verse 8, eat what is offered you. They would be traveling and preaching in Gentile towns, so the food might not always be ceremonially pure for Jews. But the mission, Jesus is saying, took priority over the food. They were coming to preach Christ, not share diets.
If a gospel worker deserves his wages, then he should not live an elaborate, lavish lifestyle. Jesus forbade the disciples from going house to house in search of a better offer or a more generous host or a more comfortable bedroom or nicer meals. That would delay the mission and it would dilute their message because it would confuse the message with prosperity. Jesus instead promised that they would have everything they needed for the mission, but they must not use the ministry to enrich themselves.
This is an important principle because in our own day, health and wealth preachers enrich themselves through gospel ministry. And I'm going to use air quotes to say gospel ministry, because many times they're not preaching the gospel at all. They're simply preaching how to have your best life now. And if God is the means to having the better life, then have God. But if it weren't God, then maybe it's money that simply provides a better life or health and so forth. Those kinds of preachers and really churches or Christians even that are using Christ to make themselves healthy, wealthy, and prosperous are missing the point.
Jesus is saying he is enough that we do not need to use the ministry for our benefit. The ministry is to advance the Messiah, not ourselves. The mission of the 72 disciples was the same as the ministry of the 12 disciples. Jesus authorized them to heal the sick and to tell them the kingdom of God has come near to them. Verse 9. He gave these disciples his divine power to preach and to perform miracles. And their ministry was designed to prepare the way for Christ and point people to his identity as the Son of God.
This ministry that God gave the 72 before his crucifixion differs slightly from our ministry today. After the resurrection, God commissions us to go with his authority and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey all that he has commanded. Our ministry focuses on gospel proclamation or preaching instead of performing miracles. Ironically, those who use the gospel to enrich themselves often have miracle ministries and they use the allure or the promise of a miracle to draw crowds and raise money. And many times it's not said this way, but it's a pay-to-play kind of performance. That if you give enough money, if you come to the right meeting, you might get access to the powerful preacher who can heal you.
And yet this runs contrary to what Jesus commissioned the 12 and the 72 to do. He sent them to perform miracles not for wealth and not for health but to validate his identity as the Son of God, to say that this Messiah that we speak of, this Christ, is none other than God himself. And to prove it to you, watch us heal the sick. Watch us touch people who are dying and restore life. Watch us even raise the dead as God gives permission to do so.
And watch us cast demons out of people who are afflicted. They did that not to gather attention to themselves, but to gather attention to Jesus. Many healing ministries are named after the healer. I can name names. I can pick on a few because they're very obvious in our culture. But Benny Hinn, for example, his ministry is Benny Hinn Ministries. Why is that? Because it's about Benny Hinn more than it's about Christ. And this would be true of anyone that is pointing people to themselves rather than Jesus. People that are using Jesus to make themselves rich rather than to enrich people with the gospel of Christ.
But this is difficult because in the work of sharing Jesus, not everyone will respond positively. And Jesus warned the disciples. He prepared them for this reality. He said, "If a town does not welcome you, then you should go into its streets," verse number 10, "and announce judgment against them. 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."
The messenger's words were a strong warning about rejecting God's kingdom. Wiping the dust from their feet symbolized removing the people from the kingdom of God. Not even the dust of this town's streets should soil the disciples' efforts to carry the good news to the next town. Additionally, they were rejecting the fact that the kingdom of God had come near. Again, they weren't merely rejecting the disciples. They were rejecting God. By rejecting Jesus' messengers, they were casting aside the kingdom of God itself.
So an unwelcoming town would face consequences. It says in verse 12, it would be more bearable on that day for Sodom than that town. The day that he was talking about, that day would be the day of God's final judgment. And the people in that town who reject God's messengers would face greater destruction than the fires that consumed Sodom. They will be held accountable for rejecting the offer of the kingdom and for rejecting the Messiah when they heard about it.
The Apostle Paul picks up this same theme in the book of Romans. And I'll shamelessly plug: if you're not coming to our adult Bible fellowship right now, they're going through the book of Romans and they're going through it methodically and carefully and turning over a lot of the details. And I would encourage you, come and be a part of that.
But the Apostle Paul picks up this same idea when he starts his letter in Romans 1:7 and says this: "Grace and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ." Paul is saying to the Roman believers, "Grace and peace attend the gospel." But he also understood that the gospel brings damnation and judgment for those who reject it. In verse 18 of chapter 1, he says, "but the wrath of God is revealed against all godlessness and wickedness." Paul parallels what Jesus told these disciples, and that is that the gospel is an offer of grace and peace, but it's also a reminder of God's judgment for those who reject it.
As we go to do the work, we must be prepared for the responses. All of us want to be positively received for sharing the gospel. We want people to say, "Thank you for coming and telling me about Christ. I don't know what I would have done without this. This changes everything." And some of us have those stories of people that we have shared Jesus with and they have been gloriously converted. But we also need to recognize that rejection is a part of sharing the gospel too. And we should not let rejection stop us as if there's something strange about us or our offer or message. Instead, we should accept rejection as a part of the mission. And the rejection is ultimately not against us, but against our Savior. So we must continue to go and carry the message because ultimately Jesus here warns about rejection.
And this is my third and final point. First he sends us into the harvest. Then he prepares us for two different responses, and he warns us about those who reject him. Continuing his warning for the towns who reject his messengers, Jesus declared a woe judgment against two towns in Galilee. The woe does not signal immediate destruction. Unlike the disciples who wanted to bring fire and brimstone against a Samaritan village for rejecting them, Jesus is giving them a woe as a strong cautionary warning. He says, "Woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida."
Jesus warned these two towns because he had preached openly in both places and performed miracles among the people. But Chorazin and Bethsaida rejected the kingdom of God. They spurned the Prince of Peace and rejected Israel's promised Messiah. Neither Jesus' authoritative preaching or his amazing miracles persuaded most of them. Jesus went on to say in verse 13, "if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes." The glorious works that Jesus did in Chorazin and Bethsaida would have produced repentance and mourning in these Gentile cities of Tyre and Sidon.
But these two Jewish towns rejected Jesus and hardened their hearts against him. While Chorazan and Bethsada spurned Christ, neither Tyre nor Sidon received these messengers declaring the kingdom of God. This is why he says it will be more bearable for them at the judgment than for you. They're both going to be judged. But since Chorazan and Bethsada had heard the gospel, God's judgment will be worse for them. It will be a more difficult situation to have rejected God than to have not known about him at all.
But as for Capernaum, Jesus' initial base for his public ministry in Galilee, he says of them, did they believe that they would be lifted to the heavens simply because Jesus was among them at one time? The residents of Capernaum had also marveled over Jesus' teachings, and many of them had appreciated his healing and were even raising people from the dead. But none of them would be able to rise to heaven without repentance and faith in Christ.
No, Jesus says, verse 15, you will go down to Hades, not heaven. Jesus contrasts heaven and Hades as the pinnacle of peace with God versus the inescapable pit of God's judgment. People in Capernaum will go down to Hades unless they repent of their sins and follow Jesus. God does not forgive people because they're in proximity to Christ. He only forgives people who follow Christ and believe him.
Jesus sends messengers who are preaching his kingdom and offering his righteousness. But whether we hear the gospel and reject it, or whether we hear the gospel and believe it, it is only faith in Jesus that removes God's judgment for our sins. When Jesus sends someone to preach his kingdom and the righteousness of Christ, he gives us an opportunity to respond with repentance and faith.
The Response of the Heart
This makes his final instructions before the 72 go out even more sobering. When he says in verse 16, "Whoever listens to you listens to me, but whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects him who sent me." These unnamed disciples, 72 of them, went out speaking for Jesus town to town and person to person. And when someone listened to them and heard them, they received Christ. But when they rejected them, they were refusing God himself.
As I think about this passage in our own context, it's possible that there is someone here today who has heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. Perhaps you've even heard it your whole life, but you've not believed in Jesus for yourself. Maybe you know Bible stories from children's Sunday school. Maybe you can share the Sermon on the Mount. Maybe you memorize the Lord's Prayer. Maybe you can repeat some of the miracles that Jesus did in his life and ministry. Maybe you've attended Bible studies, youth group, discipleship classes, and other activities as a part of our church. Maybe you're even good friends with people you consider devout Christians, but you know in your heart of hearts that you don't believe it. That it's just information to you. It's just knowledge that you've gathered. It's interesting, but it's not convicting and compelling.
This passage should serve as a reminder that unless you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you will face eternal judgment. Woe to you who have been exposed to the gospel but reject it. This passage is a reminder that Jesus guarantees people will respond to the gospel. And sometimes the sweetest conversion stories are not of the person who was hell-bent on destruction and who was living a life of awful evil. But sometimes the most powerful and persuasive testimonies are of the person who had been in and around church for a long time and heard the gospel, but it went in one ear and out the other, until one day God gripped them with his grace, convicted them of their sin, and brought them to the point of realizing that they could have forgiveness.
Brothers and sisters, I say at the end of communion nearly every time I lead it, that sin is not a hindrance to the work of God in you. Sin is the very reason for the work of God in you. And God has dealt with your sin through Jesus. These brothers went out two by two declaring the peace of God that came through Jesus Christ. And we can have that same peace through the ministry of reconciliation that God has given us.
This is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians as I conclude: "All of this is from God who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That God was reconciling the world to himself and Jesus, not counting people's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf. Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."
Let's pray. Father, I ask that you would guide us this morning to believe this message. Help us to be a harvest field where we have come to receive Christ who knew no sins to take our sins so that we have the righteousness of Christ. God, if there's anyone here this morning that is stuck in guilt for their sins and thinks, "I'm just not savable. If people here knew what I did, they would understand why I can't believe this message," God, I pray that you would show that person and that kind of thinking that the gospel came to save them, that they can be released from their guilt through your righteousness. They can experience the peace of God.
And Father, if there are any children or teenagers that are here that have heard the gospel all of their lives, they've been brought to this and other churches where they've heard preaching, where they've been taught the Bible, where they've been shown theology. I pray that it would become more than information, but that it would be gospel transformation. And God, bring your grace to bear on their lives that they would believe you. God, you promised that when we declare the gospel, it brings results. So we pray for those results today, not only in this gathering of your people, but we pray for those results as we go out and share the gospel with more people. We pray this in Jesus' mighty name. Amen.