Jesus Sends Out The Twelve
JESUS SENDS OUT THE TWELVE
LUKE 9:1-9
How far should the guidelines for preaching and the behavior of the apostles apply today?
Verses 1-6. The mission of the Twelve was to train them for their life-long task of evangelism without him visibly by their side. Bultmann has suggested that this passage was imported into the record to justify the later efforts of the church. Needless to say there is not a shred of evidence to support this. It is an example of the methods of criticism tolerated in New Testament studies which would be dismissed as ridiculous in any other branch of literary or historical criticism.
The directions laid down are still applicable in principle, though not in detail. The abandonment of all provision for the journey was practicable in the small area which they were called to traverse, and formed an object lesson in haste and complete dependence. The message was simple: the kingdom of God, by which is meant God’s rule and government in life, the acknowledgment of him as Lord. Good deeds and the alleviation of suffering were to accompany the proclamation. The church should keep a balance between the two. The message is richer now that Calvary and the New Testament are woven into it.
9:7-9. The Lord’s own progress through Galilee, and now the consolidating mission of his closer followers, occasioned in the north of the land something like the stir which the preaching of John in the lower Jordan Valley had created in Judea. Herod was disturbed. The student of the New Testament should study the background history, and learn to distinguish the five members of the remarkable royal family who appear in its pages. Herod Antipas was a man who might have found salvation. Mark tells us that he had been moved by John’s testimony (Mark 6:20). Herodias ruined his life. Unable to break free from a vicious entanglement, and claim liberty and forgiveness, he had descended to the crime which now filled his guilty mind with fear. It is impossible, as the stricken Macbeth remarked, “with the deed to trammel up the consequences.” Man cannot sin in a vacuum.
Notes 9:5: “shake off the dust”—the action of a rabbi after traveling in Gentile territory. 9:7: lit. “utterly perplexed.” Luke had sources of information at Herod’s court (Luke 8:3).