Jesus appoints seventy-two others and sends them 1"two by two" ahead of him into every town he is about to visit. They are advance workers. He is coming behind them, and their whole job is to get the towns ready to meet him. Luke does not explain the number seventy-two. Genesis 10 lists the nations descended from Noah's sons, and the number may hint that this mission will one day reach past Israel. Whatever the number means, the pattern is clear: Jesus sends ordinary people ahead of himself, and he goes where they have been.
He describes the work in one picture: 2"The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few." The field is already ripe, and the shortage is workers. His first instruction is to pray, and it is to pray to the one who owns the field: 2"pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest." Even the workers are a gift the Lord of the harvest supplies.
The next instructions are stripped down. He says plainly that he is sending them out as 3"lambs in the midst of wolves." They are to 4"carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals," so they cannot fall back on their own supplies. They will offer peace at every door, and where a son of peace lives, it will rest there. Where it does not, 6"it will return to you." They stay in the house that welcomes them, eat what is set before them, heal the sick, and announce that the kingdom of God has come near.
Some towns will refuse them. Then the workers are to wipe the dust of the town off their feet and still say, 11"the kingdom of God has come near." The offer stands even after the refusal, and the workers go on to the next door. And the refusal costs something: 12"it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town." A town that heard the news plainly and turned away is in a worse position than the city that became Scripture's picture of wickedness.
Jesus then names places where he has already worked. 13"Woe to you, Chorazin!" he says, and Bethsaida gets the same. Tyre and Sidon, Gentile cities with a long reputation for pride, would have repented in sackcloth if they had seen what these towns saw. Capernaum, where he spent the most time, hears the sharpest word: 15"will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades." Being close to Jesus was never the same as receiving him. More light refused means more accountability.
Everything rests on the last sentence, which begins 16"The one who hears you hears me." It ends with the Father: whoever rejects the messenger rejects Jesus, and whoever rejects Jesus rejects the one who sent him. The seventy-two carry no money and no weapons, and behind them stands the authority of Jesus and of the Father who sent him. Whoever speaks his word to a neighbor speaks with more weight than the speaker can see.
Prayer
Father, thank you that the harvest is still plentiful. Teach us to pray first for laborers, and to go ourselves with the little you have given. Give us the courage to offer your peace at doors we cannot be sure will open, and to leave the results with you. In Jesus' name, amen.