The Equipping of the Called (Luke 9:1–9) | The Gospel of Luke (Part 62)

Transcript

JRNT 113
08/09/2026
The Gospel of Luke: The Equipping of the Called
Luke 9:1-9
Jesse Randolph


Well after a few weeks out of it we are back in our series in the Gospel of Luke this morning, so I would invite you to turn in your Bibles or swipe on your iPads to the Gospel of Luke. We are going to be starting this morning a multi-week journey through the 9th chapter of Luke's Gospel. You can go ahead and turn with me to Luke 9 and as you turn there, I'll let you know that we are at a hinge point in this Gospel. Remember that Luke the medical doctor turned Biblical author and the human author of this Gospel, told Theophilus, the one to whom he addressed this Gospel, in Luke 1:3 that his aim was to write out this account of the life of Jesus and to do so in an “orderly sequence,” he says. And that is what we have seen in the first eight chapters of Luke's Gospel. An orderly account where we've seen the account of the conception of both John the Baptist and Jesus in Luke 1. We've seen the account of the birth of Jesus in Luke 2. We've seen the account of the ministry of John the Baptist in Luke 3. We've seen the account of the beginning of Jesus's earthly ministry in Luke 4. We've seen the account of the spread of the ministry of Christ all over Galilee in Luke 5, 6, 7 and 8. Now if you've spent any time studying any of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke or John—you know that the Lord's first appearance on earth didn't end in Galilee, did it. No. From the moment He was conceived of the Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, from the moment He was born in flesh in Bethlehem, our Lord had a date. He had a date with death, a death with a gruesome and humiliating death on a Roman instrument of torture known as a cross. An instrument of torture on which He would hang for hours as He agonized and bled and ultimately died for the sins of the world. He did so just outside the city walls of Jerusalem. That's where the account of Luke's Gospel is going to take us, to Jerusalem where Jesus, like a lamb being led to slaughter, was ultimately taken to the cross.

Luke 9 is this hinge point in this Gospel because it is in this chapter where we are going to see Jesus's journey to Jerusalem begin. In fact, if you look ahead to Luke 9:51 you'll see these words, “Now it happened that when the days for Him to be taken up,” (meaning back to the Father at His ascension) “were soon to be fulfilled, He set His face to go to Jerusalem.” Those words, “He set His face to go to Jerusalem” really represent the pivot point, the fulcrum for this entire Gospel. Those words really frame where we will be going in the Gospel of Luke over the next couple of years. Up to this point our Lord's ministry was centered around Galilee and specifically around this little fishing village of Capernaum on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee. We've seen already that Jesus from that home base would make occasional trips here or there. He went to Nazareth, His hometown, where He was run out of town. He went to the city of Nain where He raised the dead son of a widow. He went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Gerasenes where He drove unclean spirits out of a man and into a herd of pigs. But up to this point in the narrative His ministry has been focused around this single little pin drop on the map, Galilee, and specifically Capernaum.

Now all of this is about to change as Jesus is going to head down in one sense, as in south, and head up, meaning in elevation, to Jerusalem. But we're not quite there yet. His journey to Jerusalem, as we just saw, doesn't begin until verse 51. We have 50 verses to get through before then. We won't get to all 50 verses today, believe it or not, instead we are going to do the first nine, and our text this morning is Luke 9:1-9. God's Word reads, “And calling the twelve together He gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick. And He said to them, Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff nor a bag nor bread nor money nor have two tunics apiece. And whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city. And as for those who do not receive you as you go out from that city, shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. And departing they were going throughout the villages, proclaiming the gospel and healing everywhere. Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was happening and he was greatly perplexed because it was said by some that John had risen from the dead, and by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen again. And Herod said, I myself had John beheaded, but who is this man about whom I hear such things? And he kept trying to see Him.”

Now if you look ahead to what comes after this text, immediately after this text, you are going to see certain accounts that might stand out for you if you've been around the church for some time, some accounts with which you'll be more familiar—the feeding of the 5,000, Peter's confession of Jesus as the Christ, the call to take up one's cross daily to follow Him, the transfiguration. All of these are coming up in the verses that follow. But in the account, we'll be in this morning, this is highly significant and important in its own right. These nine verses, because what they showcase is Jesus raising up and training up those who would follow after Him after His death, after His resurrection, after His ascension to the right hand of the Father. You know, our Lord hadn't yet begun His journey to Jerusalem, but He knew where He would soon be headed. He knew that He was not long for this world, He knew that His earthly mission the first time around would be short. So, He got around to equipping and sending out the men who ultimately would be the ones who would carry forward His message of hope and forgiveness first to Jerusalem and then outward to Judea and then Acts 1:8, “to the end of the earth.”

I've given this sermon the title “The Equipping of the Called” to highlight what is happening in this text. You know, Jesus didn't call men who were already equipped, He didn't call the top rate scholars and theologians, He didn't call the polished professional speakers, He didn't call the professional performers or showmen. No, it was the other way around. He equipped the men who were called. He prepared them, He trained them, He empowered them to do the work that He had set them apart to do. That's exactly what we are going to see going on in this text.

Now in terms of an outline, I have four points for you this morning. In verse 1 we are going to have the Multiplication of Ministry, verse 2 is the Mimicry of the Master, verses 3-6 is the Minimization of Means and then verses 7-9 is the Misperception of Men. Now first verse 1, the Multiplication of Ministry. Verse 1, we have it here, “And calling the twelve together He gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases.” So, the setting here is still Galilee and getting more specific, probably still Capernaum where Jesus has just healed this woman with that twelve-year issue, that hemorrhage of blood, He has just caused Jairus' daughter to rise. It is there near Capernaum that Jesus called the twelve together. Now Jesus had already called these twelve men in the ultimate sense, He had already called them to Himself, He had already called them to follow Him. In fact, go back with me to Luke 6, we covered this many, many months ago but if you look at Luke 6:12 we have the initial calling of these twelve, the appointment of the twelve. Luke 6:12 says, “Now it happened that at this time that He went off to the mountain to pray and He was spending the whole night in prayer to God. And when day came, He called His disciples to Him and chose twelve of them whom He also named as apostles: Simon whom He also called Peter, and Andrew his brother and James and John and Philip and Bartholomew and Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon who was called the zealot, Judas the son of James and Judas Iscariot who became a traitor.”

This group of twelve had already been chosen, they had already been called by Jesus. And as those who had been called and had been chosen, they had already witnessed various aspects of His ministry. They had already witnessed Him preach His sermon on the plain, they had already heard His parables, they had seen Him still the storm, they had seen Him cast out demons and heal the sick and perform a variety of other types of miracles. But now with Jerusalem calling Him and with this date with death eventually calling Him, Jesus here was communicating to these same twelve, It's your turn. Look back at our text, Luke 9:1 where it says, “and calling the twelve together.” Now the word there for calling means just what it looks like—to call together, to rally, to summon, you could say. The twelve, Peter and James and John and Andrew and all the rest, the entire list from Luke 6, they didn't just happen to share in Jesus's ministry. No, they were willed by Him to join Him, they were called by Jesus to join Him. He was calling them for a specific task and for a specific purpose which was to multiply the ministry which He had already been doing up to this point. As we've seen, until now Jesus was the one who had been teaching in those synagogues and Jesus had been the one who was preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and Jesus was the one who was calling on sinners to repent and believe in His Gospel and He was the one who was healing and casting out demons and causing the blind to see and so on. Well, now it was time for His pupils to become practitioners in their own right. They now, too, along with their Master, would be teaching and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom. They too, would be proclaiming the good news of salvation. And they would be calling on sinners to repent, and they would be casting out demons, and they would be healing the sick and all the other things that Jesus had been doing. Jesus, in other words, through the twelve was intentionally and strategically multiplying His ministry. He was about to take His students, His disciples, out of the classroom as He sent them out into the field.

Now as He did so, note that Jesus wasn't going to throw them into the deep end of the pool and force them to learn how to swim on their own. No, He was going to supply them with what they needed to carry out His mission. Look at the next part of verse 1. After mentioning that Jesus called the twelve together, Luke next says that He, Jesus, “gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases.” These men wouldn't go out to heal and battle demons and the demonic realm on their own. No, they would be given divine power, power from Jesus Himself, the God/Man, to fight the battles that they soon would be fighting. Jesus would give them the power and the authority they would need. That He would do so, that He would give them the power and authority they would need, it ought not come as a surprise to us sitting here today because that's how the Lord has always operated. God has always given His ambassadors, His witnesses, His messengers the tools that they would need. He has always given them the power and the authority they would need to carry out the mission that He has given them.

We think of the book of Exodus and there was this man named Moses, a man who would be used mightily of the Lord as His messenger as he would go out to speak on behalf of the Lord. But Moses, you might recall, protested about his own ability to speak on God's behalf. Here is Exodus 4:10, “Then Moses said to Yahweh, Please, Lord, I have never been a man of words, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your slave, for I am one with a hard mouth and a hard tongue.” That is a way of saying that he was a stutterer, that Moses tended to get his tongue tied, and at most inopportune occasions. Well, here is Exodus 4:11, “And Yahweh said to him, Who has made man's mouth? Or who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Is it not I, Yahweh? So now go and I, even I, will be with your mouth and will instruct you what you shall speak.” God doesn't call the equipped. Had He done so, He would have chosen someone who had a smoother way of words than Moses did. No, He equips the called.

We think of Gideon. There is an account of Gideon given in the book of Judges, Judges 6. The Lord had commissioned Gideon to act on behalf of Israel, to take out these people known as the Midianites. The account is given in Judges 6:14 where it says, “Yahweh turned to him,” so He turns to Gideon, “and said, Go in this strength of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian. Have I not sent you?” Now here comes Gideon's protest in verse 15. “But he said to Him,” so he says to God, “Oh, Lord, with what shall I save Israel? Behold my clan is least in Manasseh and I am the youngest in my father's house.” God replies unimpressed in verse 16, “Yahweh said to him, Surely I will be with you, and you shall strike down Midian as one man.” God doesn't call the equipped. If He did so, He would have called someone from a clan of a greater stature than Gideon's. No, He equips the called.

Then there is Jeremiah, the weeping prophet as he is known. Listen to this from Jeremiah 1:4, “Now the word of Yahweh came to me saying, Before I formed you in the innermost parts, I knew you and before you came out from the womb I set you apart.” Now we're used to seeing those words cross-stitched on baby blankets and put on the wall of a nursery. Right? I formed you in the womb, those sorts of things. We never see on those blankets or on those nursery walls the next words, “I have given you as a prophet to the nations.” I digress. The point is God had been clear with Jeremiah that He had set him apart from time immemorial, from before the time he was in his mother's womb. Jeremiah still protested, this is Jeremiah 1:6, “Then I said, Alas, Lord Yahweh, behold I do not know how to speak because I am a youth.” But this young prophet protested too much because God said this to him in Jeremiah 1:7, “But Yahweh said to me, Do not say to Me I am a youth because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and all that I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you, declared Yahweh.” Again, God doesn't call the equipped. If He had done so, He would have called someone with greater age and wisdom and maturity than young Jeremiah. No, He equips the called.

We could go on with more and more examples as we make our way through the Old and New Testaments. We think of I Samuel 16 where God in selecting the next king over Israel, He bypasses each of these stronger and older sons of a shepherd named Jesse and instead points to this ruddy little runt of the bunch named David and has him become king over Israel. We think of God landing on a farmer named Amos to deliver critical words of warning to the northern kingdoms of Israel. We think of how God worked through a woman named Esther who of all things had been a member of a harem of a Persian king named Xerxes to preserve His people, Israel. God doesn't call the equipped, He equips, rather, the called.

In His salvation of sinners like us the same principle holds true. God doesn't call those who are already equipped, He doesn't call those who are, as though there could be such a thing, inherently call worthy. No, it's the opposite. Listen to these words from Paul in I Corinthians 1:26, “For consider your calling, brothers, that there were not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things which are strong, and the base things of the world and the despised God has chosen, the things that are not, so that He may abolish the things that are so that no flesh may boast before God.” God calls the ill-equipped, God calls the fools, the weak, the base, the despised, and then He equips them. That's always the order. He calls. Here's another one for you, II Timothy 1:9, “He saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity.” He calls and then He equips. Consider Hebrews 13:20, “Now the God of peace who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever, amen.” It is always in that order—the calling first, then comes the equipping.

Back to our text here in Luke 9:1, that's what the twelve had experienced. They had been called; they had been called in that mountaintop moment back in Luke 6 that I had you turn to. But now having been called by Christ, they were going to be equipped. “He gave them,” it says, “power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases.” Though they were this eclectic bunch from these unusual backgrounds, right? A tax collector, a military tactician, a future trader, a gaggle of fishermen—they didn't have to worry about whether they'd be able to carry out the assignment their Master gave them. No, He had given them power and the authority that they would need to carry out their assignment. Surely this must have been an encouragement to the twelve, to know that they had been divinely empowered to further their Master's mission, to know that they wielded authority, not their own but His authority, as they carried out the tasks that He had given them.

And that ought to be an encouragement to us today as well, sitting here today all these years later, as we remember the Great Commission which Jesus would later give to these same disciples, a commission which has been passed down from generation to generation and entrusted to you and me here today. Recall these words from Jesus Himself to these disciples in Matthew 28:18, He says, listen to these words, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Note how that began, “all authority has been given to Me.” He would say this later in Acts 1:8 to this same group of disciples that we have in our text with the exception, of course, of Judas. Acts 1:8, He says, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and even to the end of the earth.” So, Matthew 28, authority; Acts 1:8, power. Just as Jesus gave the original twelve here authority and power, He has given you and me authority and power; meaning when we speak of Christ to a lost world, we are speaking with His power, His authority. When we proclaim His Gospel to the lost, we are speaking with His power and with His authority. When we speak to the unbeliever and we tell them that “Jesus is the way and the truth and the life and no one comes to the Father but through Him,” John 14:6. We are speaking with His authority and with His power. In the 1st century Jesus gave His disciples power and authority to speak on His behalf, to act on His behalf. That's what we have here in verse 1 where calling “the twelve together He gave them power and authority.” Today, in the 21st century, He continues to give His followers power and authority to speak on His behalf, to serve as His representatives, to be His ambassadors, to proclaim His message and to further multiply His ministry.

That was our first point, the Multiplication of Ministry. As we turn now to verse 2 here is our second point, the Mimicry of the Master. Look at verse 2 where we are told, “And He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.” Now a fun fact here is that in the original language those words “He sent them out” come from the Greek verb apostello from which we get our word, you can hear it there, apostle. The apostles, including these twelve were sent ones, they were sent out ones, sent out by Christ Himself to carry His message. And here we see Christ sending out the twelve to carry out the mission He had given them. Note what that mission was, again, here in verse 2, “He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.”

Now in our study of Luke's Gospel up to this point we've already done some deeper dives and some deeper studies into all that was involved in Jesus preaching the Kingdom of God and His healing the sick. For instance, we've seen that when He preached the Kingdom of God and when He brought sight to the blind and when He healed the sick, He was acting in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Recall the words, in fact turn with me back to Luke 4, recall Jesus's own words to His fellow countrymen in Nazareth in Luke 4, starting in verse 16. Luke 4:16 says, “And He came to Nazareth where He had been brought up, and as was His custom He entered the synagogue on the sabbath and stood up to read. And the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to Him, and He opened the scroll and found the place where it was written,” and now we see these words in verses 18-19 which come, you might recall, from Isaiah 61:1-2. It says, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me because He anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor. He has sent Me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord.” So, you see it here as Israel's promised Messiah, Jesus had come both to herald, to proclaim, and to heal. He came to preach the Gospel, but He also came to give recovery of sight to the blind. As we've seen already in our study of the first few chapters of Luke, that's exactly the type of ministry that is laid out, that's exactly the type of ministry Luke records Him performing. Jesus was quite occupied, we've seen over and over, with proclaiming the Gospel of the Kingdom. You can just jot down a few of these references. Luke 4:43, “He said to them, I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other cities also, for I was sent for this purpose.” Luke 6:20, at the beginning of His Sermon on the Plain, “Turning His gaze toward the disciples, He began to say, Blessed are the poor for yours is the kingdom of God.” Luke 8:1, “Soon afterward He was going around from one city and village to another, preaching and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.”

So, what was the message? What was the message of the Kingdom? What was the good news of the Kingdom of God? What is the good news of the Kingdom of God? Well, putting it very simply, and again we've gone through this in more detail previously, it is this. God is King, God has always been King, God is eternally the universal King of all. Psalm 10:16, “Yahweh is King forever and ever.” Psalm 22:28, “The kingdom is Yahweh's and He rules over the nations.” Jeremiah 10:10, “Yahweh is the true God, He is the living God and the everlasting King.” As the eternal King, He is the universal King who rules over all. I Chronicles 29:11, “Yours, oh Yahweh, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, indeed everything that is in the heavens and the earth. Yours is the kingdom, oh Yahweh, and You exalt Yourself as head over all. Both riches and honor come from You and You rule over all.” Well, what the lost in this world must know is that God, the eternal universal King over all, is one day going to establish visibly His actual kingship here on earth in the person of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah of Israel. The coming king, King Jesus, “though He at His first coming entered lowly,” that's Philippians 2:7-8, “He took on the form of a slave by being made in the likeness of men, He humbled Himself to the point of obedience, being obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.” Though that is how He came in His first coming, humbly, lowly, He is coming again. He is coming again, returning to this earth at the end of the age and He is coming again to destroy any and all opposition and He is coming again to crush His enemies beneath His feet. He'll do so as He ushers in His Kingdom in full power and in a full display of His glory. That's the good news of the Kingdom of God, that one day He who has always reigned, who has eternally reigned, will personally and visibly reign on this earth.

Now we know from subsequent Biblical revelation in the book of Revelation, Revelation 19, that this One who is going to come again and set up His reign here on earth, He's going to return on a white horse. He is the One who is called Faithful and True. He is the One whose eyes will be like a flame of fire and on His head will be many diadems. He will be clothed with a garment that is dipped in blood. He will be followed with armies made up of those who are clothed in white linen. And out of His mouth will come a sharp sword so that it may strike down the nations. And we also know that on His garment and on His thigh will be written King of kings and Lord of lords. He is coming, the King of kings, the conquering Lord Jesus Christ is coming. When He comes, He is going to set up His kingdom on earth, a kingdom in which the present-day corruption of God's design for men and for women and for marriage will forever be stamped out. He is going to establish a kingdom in which innocent babies will no longer be slaughtered. He's going to set up a kingdom in which cries of Allah Akbar and all other false professions of religion will forever be stamped out. He is going to set up a kingdom in which demeaning the name of God and demeaning the preciousness of His Word will no longer be known. That day, friends, is coming. It's not here right now, we're not in the kingdom today, but it will come. Jesus's disciples here in Luke 9:2 were charged with proclaiming the good news, that good news of the Kingdom of God, the good news that in their context, in their 1st century context, the King had arrived and that those who heard the King's message, what they needed to do was wave the white flag, surrender to His kingship, accept His terms of peace, repent and believe in His message of salvation, yield to His authority as sovereign.

Jesus, we know, not only Himself proclaimed this good news of the kingdom, but He also accompanied that proclamation of the Gospel of the Kingdom with His ministry of healing. He healed the diseased and the sick and the blind and the nearly dead and the actual dead and the demon possessed. As we've seen in our studies of Jesus's various healing encounters in the Gospel of Luke, each one of those healings was designed to really underscore His credentials as God, God in flesh, the promised Messiah to Israel, the Savior of mankind. Each one of those healing incidents was not meant to be some sideshow act but rather was with the expressed purpose of urging sinners to repent, to turn to Him while there was still time in saving faith so that they might be spared the wrath of God and enjoy future kingdom blessings.

As we turn back to our text, Luke 9:2, we see that there was this continuity and here is kind of the major takeaway here. There is this continuity between the message that Jesus Himself had been proclaiming, the good news of the Kingdom of God, and the message the twelve were now to go out and proclaim. There was also this continuity between Jesus's ministry of healing the sick and the ministry His disciples, the twelve, were now to perform. In other words, the twelve weren't to go out and just try some new tricks, they were not to go out and try new means or new methods, they certainly were not to go out and preach an entirely new Gospel. No, they were to follow in the footsteps of their Master, to mimic Him, His message and His methods, His healing and His heralding.

And I think that's also another good reminder for us today. I was having a conversation not too long ago with one of the members of our staff who will remain nameless and one of the points he was making was that oftentimes some of the messaging that comes from this pulpit, he was being vague, he wasn't singling me out, he was saying anybody in the pulpit, some of the messaging that comes from this pulpit tends to fall into a handful of the same categories over and over. He said something like, when we're preaching up there it is some message like God is there and God is sovereign and God comforts those who are afflicted and we're all sinners and Jesus died for us and our future is sure and fixed in heaven and Jesus is Lord and Jesus expects our obedience so we better obey Him while we wait for Him to come get us. It's one or more of those messages on a typical Sunday morning or evening. And I would say, Right! Absolutely! That is what we preach. Praise the Lord that that is the message that comes through the pages of the Word of God every Sunday morning and every Sunday evening. We do preach a relatively certain and fixed, and you might even say, predictable message each and every week.

If you think about it, that's what Jesus did, too. He preached a very certain, fixed, steady and even at sometimes predictable message. Here we see that in bloom as He is telling His disciples here in verse 2 to preach the same message of the Kingdom of God that He had been preaching up to this point. And that message that He conveyed here to the twelve, and that He would eventually convey to a broader group of apostles again is the same message we are called to proclaim. We're called, as it says in Jude 3, to “contend earnestly for the faith which was handed down once to the saints.” We're called to preach the same old time Gospel where it says in Hebrews 2:3 it was “first spoken by the Lord and then confirmed by those who heard.” We don't need to dress the Gospel up, we don't need to polish it, don't need to spit shine it, don't need to bend it to meet the demands of our secular age. We don't need to apologize for it, we don't need to walk it back, we don't need to accommodate it to settle the consciences of those who are offended by it. We don't need to submit the Gospel message that we've been charged to proclaim for democratic approval to the legislature. We don't need to submit it for review with the Supreme Court, we don't need to wait for kings or rulers or governors or the President to embrace it. No, we simply proclaim it. We proclaim, I Timothy 2:5, that “there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” We proclaim, Acts 4:12, that “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.” We proclaim, I Timothy 1:15, “It is a trustworthy saying and deserving full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am foremost.” We proclaim, Galatians 2:20, that “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” We proclaim with John Newton, the English slave trader turned slave of Christ, that I am a great sinner, but Christ is a great Savior.

In other words, like the twelve here our proclamation of the Gospel need not be original. In fact, I would say that our proclamation of the Gospel ought to be profoundly unoriginal. When it comes to proclaiming the Gospel we are on no safer ground than when we stick to the script and tell people Jesus died for you, He died for me, you can have eternal life, you can enjoy future Kingdom blessings, you can be spared of the wrath that is to come if you believe that Jesus died and rose for you and you turn to Him in simple saving faith. That's it. We need to move on.

So far verse 1, the Multiplication of Ministry; verse 2, the Mimicry of the Master; verses 3-6, here is our third point, it's the Minimization of Means. Verse 3, “And He said to them, Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff nor a bag nor bread nor money nor have two tunics apiece. And whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city. And as for those who do not receive you, as you go out from that city shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. And departing, they were going throughout the villages, proclaiming the gospel and healing everywhere.” We are in the same scene here, Jesus has given power and authority to the twelve over the demons and all diseases, verse 1. He has charged them to go out and preach the Kingdom of God, verse 2, and to heal the sick. Note that as He did so, He didn't give them a company card. He didn't give them a stipend or a money bag or a meal allowance. No, verse 3, “He said to them, Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff nor bag nor bread nor money nor have two tunics apiece.” Now imagine being one of the twelve as you heard the Lord say that. For these men, many of these men, they left behind their nets to follow Jesus. In the case of Levi, he has left behind this lucrative tax gathering business. For some they left behind family, parents and siblings and wives and children to sit at the feet of and learn from this itinerant teacher who is proclaiming to be the promised Messiah of Israel. So, you are one of the twelve and you are hearing this man teach. He has taught you personally, you've seen Him teach others in crowd settings, you've watched Him perform a variety of miracles, every one of which has left you in awe. And now He is telling you it's your turn to teach and preach and heal and it's your turn to take what you've learned from the school of the Savior and take it out into the real world. You're probably pretty excited.

There is just this one catch. Verse 3, “Take nothing for your journey, neither a staff nor a bag nor bread nor money nor have two tunics apiece.” In other words, no weapon to defend you in case you are attacked. No additional supplies in case you get stranded. No additional food in case your stomach starts to growl. No extra clothing in case your clothing gets wet or ruined. No currency to buy the very things you lack. Take nothing, He says, along for the journey. Pack light, pack very light. Jesus wanted the twelve, as they went out, to go out in faith. He wanted them to trust that God would provide. He wanted them to trust that God would neither leave them nor forsake them as they proclaimed His message. As they went on this mission of preaching the Kingdom of God and healing the sick as those who had been commissioned by Christ Himself; He wanted them to do so in absolute reliance and faith in Him.

Now if they were to be minimalistic in terms of the items they brought on their journey, they were also to be minimalistic in terms of their accommodations. Look at verse 4 where Jesus said, “And whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that city.” In Matthew 10:11 there is a parallel statement from Jesus where He says, “And whatever city or village you enter,” Matthew 10:11, “whatever city or village you enter inquire who is worthy in it and stay there until you leave.” Those additional words from Matthew's Gospel where He says, "inquire who is worthy in it,” what those are highlighting is someone who has received and accepted the good news message that these disciples were proclaiming. They had received the message of the Kingdom of God, the message of the Gospel. So, Jesus here is saying, if you are going out as these heralds and these healers on My behalf and you end up in one of these houses where the people are receptive to the message I have charged you to proclaim, not only do you accept their invitation, but you are also to stay there. Don't leave. Verse 4, He says, “stay there until you leave that city.” Don't find some greener pasture. Don't leave the receptive household that has drafty ventilation for the unreceptive household where they are offering you a nice down comforter. Right? Don't leave the receptive household where they are serving up soggy bread for the unreceptive household where they have laid out this beautiful charcuterie board. That's the idea here. Rather, recognize that not only does the Lord provide, and He always provides, but He provides for His people through His people. He provides for His people through His people, so let Him do so. That's the sense here.

Even then, though, as He sent them out, Jesus warned the twelve that they shouldn't expect to be embraced wherever they went. No, look at verse 5, “And as for those who do not receive you, as you go out from that city shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” In other words, it was not always a foregone conclusion that Jesus's disciples would always find an open door or a warm bed or a warm meal or a receptive household or a charcuterie board wherever they visited. That was not to be expected. Rather, they were to prepare themselves for opposition, for unbelief and in some cases trouble. This lines up directly, what He says here in verse 5, with what we see elsewhere in other Scriptures. John 3:19, “And this is the judgment that the light has come into the world and men love the darkness rather than the light.” I John 3:13, “Do not marvel, brothers, if the world hates you.” John 15:18, these are the words of Jesus Himself, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated Me before it hated you.” Those last words from John 15:18, those have proven true repeatedly over the past 2,000 years. Jesus was opposed and hated by the world in the ultimate sense; the cross is testimony to that fact. Those who followed Him immediately, the apostles, were opposed and hated by the world. Peter and John were arrested in Acts 4 for preaching the message of Christ. Stephen was stoned in Acts 7, put to death, for preaching the cross of Christ. Paul was opposed in Antioch in Acts 13, in Ephesus in Acts 19 for preaching the message of Christ. Should it really be any wonder, as Jesus said here in Luke 9:5, that there would be some who do not receive you? Should it really be any big surprise? No. Opposition, resistance to those who preach Christ is to be expected, even embraced, to anyone who preaches His Gospel.

When that happens, said Jesus to the twelve in the second half of verse 5, when they oppose you, when the rejection comes, when the hostility comes, He says, “Shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” In other words, move on. Move on. Some households will invite you in, some won't. Some will embrace you; more will reject you; and when they reject you, “shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” Context: When the Jews of Jesus's day would travel into foreign lands, Gentile lands specifically, when they would make their way back to Jewish territory they would shake the dust off their feet as an indicator, a ceremonial act, to show that they were separated from the Gentiles. Well, the twist here is that Jesus is telling His Jewish followers to go through that practice with respect to other Jews, to put them on notice that because of their rejection of the Gospel message and their rejection of Jesus their Messiah, not only would they not, one day, inherit the Kingdom of God but what they would face one day would be the judgment of their King upon His return. By shaking the dust off their feet Jesus's disciples would be signifying that they would no longer be associated with those who rejected their Master. Instead, they would be separated from them. This is sort of foreshadowing and foretelling what Paul would later say in II Corinthians 6:14 where he says, “What fellowship does light have with darkness.”

As we turn to verse 6, we see that Luke 9:6 is really a bookend passage, it closes the loop on what Luke has recorded in verses 1-2. In verses 1-2 we've seen the twelve given power and authority as they are sent to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal the sick. Then here in verse 6 Luke records that the twelve essentially follow our Lord's marching orders. Look what it says, “And departing they were going throughout the villages,” meaning the villages of Galilee, “proclaiming the gospel,” the Gospel of the Kingdom of God, “and healing everywhere.” You know back in Luke 6:46 these very men would have heard Jesus say those words that we all think of. I know at some point, where Jesus uses this expression, “Now why do you call Me Lord, Lord and not do what I say.” These men, the twelve, who did call Jesus Lord and did want to honor Him and did want to resolve to do what He said, well they did what He said. They went out preaching and healing, all in His name, and by His power and His authority.

Well, that brings us now to our fourth and final point this morning. We've looked at the Multiplication of Ministry, we've looked at the Mimicry of the Master, we've looked at the Minimization of Means, and last, we have the Misperception of Men. Verse 7, “Now Herod the tetrarch heard of all that was happening and he was greatly perplexed because it was said by some that John had risen from the dead, and by some that Elijah had appeared, and by others that one of the prophets of old had risen again. And Herod said, I myself had John beheaded but who is this Man about whom I hear such things? And he kept trying to see Him.” Now we last encountered Herod the tetrarch, also known as Herod Antipas, back in Luke 3 where we learned that it was under his rulership in Judea that the ministry of John the Baptist arose. It was this same Herod who we saw in Luke 3:19 who was reproved by John the Baptist for taking his brother's wife, Herodias. It was this same Herod we saw in Luke 3:20 who had John the Baptist locked up in prison. And we see here in Luke 9:9, and this is also confirmed in Matthew 14 and Mark 6, that it was this same Herod who had John the Baptist beheaded.

As he heard all of what Jesus was doing in his territory, in Galilee, in his district, this region of which he was ruler, “Herod,” it says here in verse 7, “was greatly perplexed.” He was greatly perplexed because of all the theories that were starting to bubble up and swirl around over who this Jesus was. Some said, verse 7, that this Jesus was the recently beheaded John who had suddenly and somehow risen from the dead. Now, no doubt, put yourself in Herod's shoes for just a moment, that would have made him a tad anxious. I mean, surely his conscience was already accusing him of what he had done to John but now he is thinking that now his head is somehow reattached in the person of Jesus and he is going to come after me. He would be terrified. Others were saying, verse 8, that Elijah, who had long ago been taken away in a chariot in II Kings 2, had somehow appeared. That would line up with prophecy, the prophecy of Malachi 4:5 which says, “I am going to send Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome day of Yahweh.” Still others, Luke 9:8, were saying that he was one of the prophets, maybe Jeremiah, maybe Moses, of old who had risen again. Herod didn't know what to believe. Herod was tied in knots over the identity of this man who was preaching and healing in his district and so he asks this question in verse 9. “But who is this man about whom I hear such things?” And that curiosity prompted action. Luke records at the end of verse 9 that “he kept trying to see Him.”

Now we're going to encounter Herod at least a couple more times in our study of Luke's Gospel, but that question that he poses here in verse 9, “who is this man,” that is one that has perplexed many. It perplexed Herod himself, this powerful ruler, it's recorded here in verse 9. It perplexed Jesus's own disciples, in fact these very twelve, when Jesus stilled the storm back in the previous chapter. They asked the question, Luke 8:25, “Who then is this that He commands even the winds and the water and they obey Him?” We're going to see in other Luke accounts, but also other parallel Gospel accounts a similar question being asked. In Matthew 11 Jesus is asked, “Are You the One who is to come, or shall we look for someone else?” Pontius Pilate asked Jesus in Luke 23:3, “Are You the king of the Jews?” And then we have again Herod's question here, “Who is this man about whom I hear such things?” On and on throughout church history that very question has confounded critics and stumps skeptics for now going on 2,000 years.

As we continue on in our study of Luke 9 in the weeks ahead, this isn't a cop-out, this is a transition, we are going to see answers to Herod's question here play out in many of the next scenes that follow in the verses that follow. Among other things in the weeks ahead as we work through some familiar accounts, we're going to see that Jesus is the Bread of Life, He's the Christ of God, He's God's chosen One, He's the Son of man, He's the Son of God, He's the Master of His subjects, He's the One who would suffer on behalf of those subjects, He is the glorious Lord of all. So, as we continue on in our study of Luke's Gospel my prayer is that we would come away each and every Sunday morning in awe of the worth and the worthiness of Jesus our Savior, this One who Herod was asking questions about and this One about whom we have answers in His precious Word.