Luke 10:1

The Lord appointed other seventy

Our Lord’s instructions to the severity

I. CHRIST SENT OUT THE SEVENTY BY PAIRS.

II. OUR BLESSED LORD FAIRLY AND FAITHFULLY WARNED THE SEVENTY OF THE DIFFICULTY AND DANGER OF THE CHARGE WHICH THEY WERE UNDERTAKING.

III. OUR LORD CAUTIONS HIS MISSIONARIES AGAINST AN OVER CURIOUS AND MINUTE REGARD TO ACCOMMODATION PREPARATORY TO THEIR ENTERING ON THEIR MISSION, AND WHILE EMPLOYED IN EXECUTING THE BUSINESS OF IT.

IV. OUR LORD RECOMMENDS TO THE DISCIPLES UNDIVIDED, UNDEVIATING ATTENTION TO WHAT WAS SPECIALLY COMMITTED TO THEM.

V. OUR LORD’S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE SEVENTY RESPECTING THEIR WORK AND THE MANNER IN WHICH THEY WERE TO PERFORM IT.

VI. CHRIST ENCOURAGES HIS DISCIPLES WITH THE ASSURANCE THAT HE SHOULD CONSIDER THE RECEPTION WHICH THEY MET WITH, AS GIVEN TO HIMSELF. (H. Hunter, D. D.)

Two and two

Two and two before His face

Yet questions of high interest immediately arise. Why should there be any forerunners? What were they sent to do? In order to the full, personal influence and reign of Christ anywhere, there is a law of necessary preparation. Very impressive it is to see that God, when He has any great gift to communicate, proceeds by pre-arrangement. He never bursts into His family with thunders of revelation too sudden or loud for them to bear. Take the one signal event which stands in the centre of all history,--the personal coming of the Son of God on the earth. The prophetic spirit of His nation had been looking out for Him, as nightly watchers on Mount Moriah looked out for the dawn toward Hebron, two thousand years. In fact, to eyes that see the divinity in the Saviour’s face at all, it is not difficult to discern, all along those earlier ages, heralds like “the other seventy also,” going before that Face into the places whither He Himself was afterward to come. Now on that great scale of time and space we have a picture, in colossal proportions, of what goes on in every one of our own breasts. Conscious of it or not, agencies are at work in us to make ready, if we only will for the entrance of the Lord of the heart into His home and dwelling-place there. Having created us for Christian service, as the true end and real glory of our being, our Father takes pains to fit and to fashion us for that destiny, with all its honour and all its joy. By secret influences, untraceable as the wind that bloweth where it listeth, silently pressing on the springs of feeling and principle within us; by strange sorrows and misgivings there. That we may become wise and strong and pure in our grief, this process of personal preparation is in continual operation. The heralds are out, sent by Him who is coming after them. The “other seventy” are proceeding on their errand. We ourselves are the cities and places whither He would come. Again, it appears from the Lord’s sending of the seventy that all personal efforts and public movements for extending truth and increasing righteousness in the world are really parts of His work, and are dependent on His spiritual power. Christendom everywhere is full of beneficent activities. The benefactions of this late age, half-blind though they may be, or forgetful of their Author, were born at Bethlehem, and grew in stature at Nazareth, and conquered their enemies--selfishness and pride and wrath--at Calvary, and went out among thenations with the apostles, if we had seen one of the seventy walking in some by-way of Jericho or Bethany, we might have seen no badge of Christ upon him, and wondered at his eager gait or absorbed expression. But he was going where the Master sent him, and the Master’s mantle was on him, and the Master’s secret in his soul. Thither, after him, the Master Himself would come, to reaffirm and fulfil his words, to deepen, sanction, complete his work. (Bishop F. D. Huntington.)