In Luke 9 the Lord Jesus is for the first time sending His disciples out to do ministry. In order to be most effective, they had to do certain things. In v.1-6 we are given the profile of an effective witness. In our last blog we considered a couple of these marks: he shares the message of salvation, and he manifests compassion. The third is found in v.3: he trust the Lord to meet his needs.
In Matthew 10:8 we read, "Freely you have received, freely give." Freely, the disciples received all things from God and now He is challenging them to give it away to others freely. The witness is to never seek to be enriched from the suffering of others. Sick and suffering people will pay anything to someone they think can help them. We must never put a price on our ministry.
In v.3 we read, "He told them: “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt." In Matthew 6 we read, "Take no thought for what you shall eat, or drink, or what you shall wear, you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and everything else will be added to you.”
God will always take care of His own. Dependence is a must for the disciple and is a marvelous thing to realize and learn because as we learn it, we get to know the Lord personally. And, the result is the profile of a witness is made known to, in, and through the disciple. It is then he proclaims salvation, he manifests compassion, and he maintains trust.
The fourth characteristic of the disciple/witness is he is content. In v.4 we read, "Whatever house you enter, stay there until you leave that town." In those days traveling teachers wanted to stay just long enough to get money out of a family and then go to the next place. They kept moving to the next house, collecting more money from everybody. The Lord Jesus is saying just go to one place, stay there the whole time. You start there and you leave from there. This is about looking to Him for our needs and being content.
The fifth characteristic of the witness is discernment. In v.5 we read, " If people do not welcome you, leave their town and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them." When they reject us and our message, we are to "shake the dust off our feet as a testimony against them."
Shaking off the dust from the feet was an old Jewish custom. Whenever a Jew traveled into Gentile areas, and they came back across the border into Israel, they would shake the dirt off all of their bodies as a symbol of judgment and disdain. The Jews weren’t to bring pagan dirt into the holy land.
If we are to be effective witnesses, we must share the message of salvation, manifest compassion, maintain trust in God, demonstrate compassion, and exercise discernment.
According to v.6 the twelve did exactly what the Lord told them to do. Departing immediately without packing anything, they began doing ministry among the villages proclaiming the gospel and healing everywhere. And, the Lord Jesus multiplied Himself twelve times.
The believer is called to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel, to show lost sinners compassion, and to live lives that are marked by trust in the Lord alone, so that no one could accuse us of doing ministry for ill-gotten gain. All the while growing in our God-given ability to discern the situations, people and needs.
