Jesus was severe in his warnings

JESUS WAS SEVERE IN HIS WARNINGS
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
Luke 10:10-12 10Butwhen you enter a town and are
not welcomed, go into its streets and say, 11'Eventhe
dust of your town we wipe from our feet as a warning
to you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God has
come near.' 12I tell you, it will be more bearableon
that day for Sodom than for that town.
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Guilt And Punishment
Luke 10:12-15
W. Clarkson
These very solemn words of our Lord demand our attention the more, because
his thought is so fully illustrated. They suggestorconvey to us three truths.
I. THAT GREAT INIQUITY MAY LOOK FOR SIGNAL PUNISHMENT
AT THE HAND OF GOD. Jesus does not intimate that Tyre and Sidon
suffered any more than they deserved, that Sodom had a retribution which
was in the smallestdegree out of proportion to its guilt. These cities deserved
their doom; they sowedthe wind, and reaped the whirlwind. That which

happened to them was exactlywhat they might have expected;and it is just
what such cities as they were may always look for. It does not require a
desolating army or a miraculous storm to bring disastrous evil upon the head
of shameful wrong. Without such particular instruments as these, the blow
which slays and buries will certainly descend. If destruction comes not on the
wings of one wind, it will come on those of another; whether we think of the
vicious city or the profligate man, we may be sure that greatguilt will, sooner
or later, work out the downfall and extinction of the evil-doer. By human
history and the record of the lives of men, as well as by the sacredpage, "the
wrath of God is revealedagainstall unrighteousness ofmen;" they cannotand
will not "escape the judgment of God."
II. THAT NEITHER SWIFTNESSNOR APPARENT SEVERITYIN
PUNISHMENT IS A SURE CRITERION OF THE MAGNITUDE OF THE
CRIME. Destructionhad come down suddenly and terribly on Sodom;
Capernaum, Chorazin, and Bethsaida were still existing, and were still
rejoicing in outward prosperity. Was the ancient city so much guiltier in
God's sight than the (then) modern towns of Galilee? No, replied the great
Teacher. Had these ruined cities of a former age enjoyed such privileges as the
citizens of his owntime were possessing but neglecting, they would have
repented and would have been spared. We must take care how we argue from
sudden and severe evils to the relative guiltiness of the sufferers. These evils
may clearlyindicate wrong; they may (though in some cases theydo not)
indicate very greatwrong-doing; but they do not prove that those on whom
they descendare more guilty than others who are spared.
1. God may think well, in one case, to manifest his holiness by severe
visitation, and in another case to illustrate his patience by delaying long the
stroke of justice.

2. God may punish one city (or man) by physical and visible inflictions; he
may chastise anotherby letting his moral laws do their appointed work, and
bring down the men themselves to that low spiritual estate whichis the
saddestand direst consequence ofsin.
III. THAT PRIVILEGE IS VERY PRECIOUS, BUT IT IS ALSO VERY
PERILOUS. Capernaum was "exaltedto heaven," raisedvery high indeed in
privilege. There the Son of God abode;there he wrought his mightiest works;
there he lived his holy, patient, loving life; there he spake his deep, broad,
ever-living truths; there Godwas manifested in power and grace. It was
favored above all cities in the height of its spiritual privileges. But it knew not
the day of its visitation; it drew not nigh in reverence to its Lord; it rejected
his doctrine; it remained afar off from God and heavenly wisdom. And it
incurred thereby the Savior's strong condemnation; it accumulated guilt, and
laid up for itself wrath againstthe day of wrath; it was "thrust down to hell"
in reproach and retribution. We learn, more particularly:
1. That humility of spirit, rather than reproachfulness of tone, becomes us.
2. That the children of specialprivilege have great reasonfor devout heart-
searching, lestthey should find themselves the heirs of Divine condemnation. -
C.
Biblical Illustrator
They receive you not.
Luke 10:10-12
Opportunity wasted

J. Parsons.
I. THE OBJECTTO WHICH THIS ALLEGATION RELATES — "The
kingdom of God."
1. The gospelis designated"the kingdom of God," because it is constituted by
God. There is claimed on its behalf, strictly and truly, a Divine origin.
2. The gospelis designated"the kingdom of God," because it is the ordained
instrument of God to restore His authority over the minds of men.
II. THE FACT WHICH THE ALLEGATION AFFIRMS. "The kingdom of
God is come nigh unto you" —
1. In the sacredand inspired writings.
2. In the proclamations and appeals of the ministry.
3. In the conversionof other men.
4. In the partial impressions of your ownmind.
III. THE DEPORTMENTWHICH THE ALLEGATION DEPRECATES.
1. Continued carelessnessofthe truth.

2. Continued rejection of the truth.
(J. Parsons.)
The grace ofsalvation coming near us
D. A. Clark.
I. WHEN MAY THE KINGDOM OF GOD (OR THE GOSPEL)BE SAID
TO COME NIGH TO AN INDIVIDUAL OR A PEOPLE?
1. When it comes within the hearing of the ear.
2. When it reaches the understanding.
3. When it gains accessto the conscience.
II. WHY THE GOSPELSALVATION IS BROUGHT NIGH TO SOME
WHO ARE FINALLY LOST.
(D. A. Clark.)
Symbolical action
M. F. Sadler.
To "shake off the dust of their feet" as a witness againstany city which had
wholly rejectedtheir message, signifiedthat they had no more part or lot with
the inhabitants — that they would retain nothing of theirs, no, not so much as

what accidentallycleavedto their sandals. This was one of the many outward
significant symbolicalacts of which the specialmessengersofGod made
constantuse. Thus Jeremiahput on a yoke, and hid a girdle by the side of the
Euphrates; thus Agabus bound St. Paul's girdle round his own hands and
feet; and Paul himself and Barnabas on one occasionusedthis very signof
shaking off the dust of their feet againstthe Jews ofAntioch in Pisidia, who
had rejectedGod's word spokenby their mouth. We have given up altogether
the use of such signs, and I believe have lostmuch by our rejectionof them.
(M. F. Sadler.)
No room for excuse
G. Stevens.
The Rev. William Grimshaw, an early Methodist of eccentric manner,
frequently would preach before the doors of such as neglectedthe parish
worship. "If you will not come to hear me at the church," he would say on
these occasions,"youshall hear me at home; if you perish, you shall perish
with the sound of the gospelin your ears."
(G. Stevens.)
COMMENTARIES
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers
(12) It shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom.—SeeNote onMatthew
10:15.
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

10:1-16 Christ sent the seventydisciples, two and two, that they might
strengthen and encourageone another. The ministry of the gospelcalls men to
receive Christ as a Prince and a Saviour; and he will surely come in the power
of his Spirit to all places whither he sends his faithful servants. But the doom
of those who receive the grace of God in vain, will be very fearful Those who
despise the faithful ministers of Christ, who think meanly of them, and look
scornfully upon them, will be reckonedas despisers ofGod and Christ.
Barnes'Notes on the Bible
See the notes at Matthew 10:14-15.
Jamieson-Fausset-BrownBible Commentary
12-15. (See on[1627]Mt11:20-24).
for Sodom—Tyre and Sidon were ruined by commercialprosperity; Sodom
sank through its vile pollutions: but the doom of otherwise correctpersons
who, amidst a blaze of light, rejectthe Saviour, shall be less endurable than
that of any of these.
Matthew Poole's Commentary
See Poole on"Luke 10:8"
Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible
But I sayunto you,.... The same that he said to the twelve apostles, whenhe
sent them out, Matthew 10:15,
that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than for that city. By
"that day" is meant, the famous day to come, the last day; the day of
judgment, as it is expressedin Matthew; and so the Ethiopic versionreads
here, "it shall be better in the day of judgment". Sodom was a very wicked
city, and was destroyedby fire from heavenfor its iniquity, and its inhabitants
suffer the vengeance ofeternalfire: and there was also Gomorrha, a
neighbouring city, guilty of the same crimes, and shared the same fate; and
which is mentioned along with Sodom in Matthew; and is here read in the

Persic version. And the sense of the whole is, that though the iniquities of
Sodom and Gomorrha were very great, and their punishment very
exemplary; yet, as there will be degrees oftorment in hell, the case ofsuch a
city, which has been favoured with the Gospel, and has despisedand rejected
it, will be much worse than the case ofthose cities, which were devoured by
fire from heaven; and than that of the inhabitants of them in the future
judgment, and to all eternity; See Gill on Matthew 10:15.
Geneva Study Bible
But I sayunto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than
for that city.
EXEGETICAL(ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)
Meyer's NT Commentary
Luke 10:12. Comp. Matthew 10:15.
Cambridge Bible for Schools andColleges
12. more tolerable in that day for Sodom] The great principle which explains
these words may be found in Luke 12:47-48 (compare Hebrews 2:2-3;
Hebrews 10:28-29).
Pulpit Commentary
Verse 12. - But I sayunto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for
Sodom, than for that city. Such a rejectionimplies that they would have
nothing to do with the Masterof these preachers, the pitiful, loving, Galilaean
Teacher. Thesewere days of possible mighty blessings, ofproportional
terrible punishments. The woe of Sodom, that well-knownswift destruction,
most probably through sudden volcanic agency, was tolerable in comparison
with the far more awful doom reservedin the immediate future, at the hands
of Rome, for these guilty cities of Palestine (see a further note on this on ver.
15).

STUDYLIGHTRESOURCES
Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible
I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that
city.
In that day ... is a reference to the final judgment which shall terminate the
dispensationof grace. The Saviour's use of "that day" in this passage, where
its primary reference would appear to apply to the "coming nigh" of the
kingdom, shows that the kingdom of God will "come" in a more exalted state
at the final judgment. Peter's reference to Christians entering into "the
external kingdom" (2 Peter1:11) also sheds light on this.
Sodom ... was a grosslywickedcity whose very name came to be associated
with depravity; but their carnal sins in the sight of God were actually less
reprehensible than the arrogantrejection of the Redeemerby the cities of
Israel. Sodom was destroyedby fire from heaven (Genesis 19:1-26). The
greatersin of the cities of Israel derived from their refusing to see the Light of
all nations, an opportunity Sodom did not have.
Copyright Statement
James Burton Coffman Commentaries reproduced by permission of Abilene
Christian University Press, Abilene, Texas, USA. All other rights reserved.

Bibliography
Coffman, James Burton. "Commentary on Luke 10:12". "Coffman
Commentaries on the Old and New Testament".
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bcc/luke-10.html. Abilene
Christian University Press, Abilene, Texas, USA. 1983-1999.
Return to Jump List return to 'Jump List'
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible
Copyright Statement

The New John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible Modernisedand adapted
for the computer by Larry Pierce of Online Bible. All Rightes Reserved,
Larry Pierce, Winterbourne, Ontario.
A printed copy of this work can be ordered from: The Baptist Standard
Bearer, 1 Iron Oaks Dr, Paris, AR, 72855
Bibliography
Gill, John. "Commentary on Luke 10:12". "The New JohnGill Exposition of
the Entire Bible". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/geb/luke-
10.html. 1999.
Robertson's WordPictures in the New Testament
More tolerable (ανεκτοτερον — anektoteron). Comparative of the verbal
adjective ανεκτος — anektos from ανεχομαι — anechomaiAn old adjective,
but only the comparative in the N.T. and in this phrase (Matthew 10:15;
Matthew 11:22, Matthew 11:24; Luke 10:12, Luke 10:14).
Copyright Statement
The Robertson's WordPictures of the New Testament. Copyright �
Broadman Press 1932,33,Renewal1960. All rights reserved. Used by
permission of Broadman Press (Southern BaptistSunday SchoolBoard)
Bibliography
Robertson, A.T. "Commentary on Luke 10:12". "Robertson's WordPictures
of the New Testament".

https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/rwp/luke-10.html. Broadman
Press 1932,33. Renewal1960.
The Fourfold Gospel
I say unto you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that
city1.
It shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city. For
comment, see .
Copyright Statement
These files are public domain and are a derivative of an electronic edition that
is available on the Christian ClassicsEtherealLibrary Website. These files
were made available by Mr. Ernie Stefanik. First published online in 1996 at
The RestorationMovementPages.
Bibliography
J. W. McGarveyand Philip Y. Pendleton. "Commentaryon Luke 10:12".
"The Fourfold Gospel".
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/tfg/luke-10.html. Standard
Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 1914.
John Trapp Complete Commentary
12 But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom,
than for that city.

Ver. 12. See Matthew 11:24.
Copyright Statement
These files are public domain.
Text Courtesyof BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Bibliography
Trapp, John. "Commentary on Luke 10:12". John Trapp Complete
Commentary. https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/jtc/luke-
10.html. 1865-1868.
Heinrich Meyer's Critical and ExegeticalCommentaryon the New Testament
Luke 10:12. Comp. Matthew 10:15.
Copyright Statement
Bibliography
Meyer, Heinrich. "Commentary on Luke 10:12". Heinrich Meyer's Critical
and ExegeticalCommentaryon the New Testament.
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/hmc/luke-10.html. 1832.

Matthew Poole's EnglishAnnotations on the Holy Bible
See Poole on"Luke 10:8"
Copyright Statement
Bibliography
Poole, Matthew, "Commentaryon Luke 10:12". Matthew Poole's English
Annotations on the Holy Bible.
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/mpc/luke-10.html. 1685.
Justin Edwards' Family Bible New Testament
Those who reject the gospelrejectthe Saviour; and the greatertheir light, if
they do not improve it, the greaterwill be their guilt and the more dreadful
their condemnation. Chap Luke 12:47-48.
Copyright Statement

Bibliography
Edwards, Justin. "Commentary on Luke 10:12". "Family Bible New
Testament". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/fam/luke-
10.html. American TractSociety. 1851.
Cambridge Greek Testamentfor Schools andColleges
12. Σοδόμοις ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ ἀνεκτότερον. The words ‘in that day’ are left
vague. They may refer primarily to approaching national judgments;
ultimately to the Great Day. By the punishment of the city we must of course
understand the punishment of its inhabitants. The greatprinciple which
explains these words may be found in Luke 12:47-48 (compare Hebrews 2:2-3;
Hebrews 10:28-29).
Copyright Statement
Bibliography
"Commentary on Luke 10:12". "Cambridge Greek Testamentfor Schools
and Colleges".https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/cgt/luke-
10.html. 1896.
PeterPett's Commentary on the Bible

“I say to you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that
city.”
Once they had done this it would bring that city or town into a position where
it would be seenas worse than Sodom in the day of Judgment. For with all its
sins Sodomhad not rejectedthe Kingly Rule of God. The Rabbis would claim
that the inhabitants of Sodomwere so wickedthat they would not rise againat
the lastday, for the fate of the people of Sodom (Genesis 18:16 to Genesis
19:22)had become proverbial (compare Isaiah 1:9-10). How much more
doomed then the city which turned its back on the Kingly Rule of God. This
does bring out how seriouslytheir messageand mission was to be viewed.
Copyright Statement
Bibliography
Pett, Peter. "Commentary on Luke 10:12". "PeterPett's Commentaryon the
Bible ". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/pet/luke-10.html.
2013.
Expository Notes ofDr. Thomas Constable
The common characteristic ofSodomand these Palestiniancities was failure
to repent when given a warning by God (cf. Genesis 19:24-29;Matthew 10:15;
Matthew 11:20-24;Romans 9:29; 2 Peter2:6; Jude 1:7). The fate of the people
of Sodom had become proverbial (cf. Isaiah 1:9-10). The Sodomites had the
witness of Lot, but these cities had the witness of forerunners and eyewitnesses

of the Messiah. The Sodomites couldhave saved their city by repenting, but
these cities could have enteredthe messianic kingdom. Therefore their guilt
was greaterthan that of the people of Sodom.
PRECEPT AUSTIN RESOURCES
BRUCE HURT MD
Luke 10:10 "But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out
into its streets and say,
go out: Lu 9:5 Mt 10:14 Ac 13:51 18:6
Multiple ResourcesonLuke 10 (includes the sermons below)
Luke 10:5-11 Responsesto the Kingdom: Peace orPunishment - John
MacArthur
Luke 10:1-16 The Crucial Message - StevenCole
RESPONSE TO
REJECTION OF THE GOSPEL
They do not receive you - More discussiontakes place concerning rejection
(the people do not welcome you), as these verses lead into the condemnation of
certain towns for their rejectionof God’s kingdom. (NET Note)

The short answerfor what to do when they rejectthe messageis to walk
away!Woe! This might serve in some way to warn those who rejectthe
messageand give them pause to ponder its significance.
Not receive (1209)(dechomai)means to they do not acceptwith a deliberate
and ready receptionor they do not welcome eitherthe messageand
messenger.
Robertsonon go out into its streets - Out of the inhospitable houses into the
broad open streets. (Where everyone in the city would be able to hear the
horrible words of Lk 10:11! They would have no excuse).
Streets (plateia)refers to the “broad street” which would be the main road in
the city which would allow the greatestnumber of people to hear the
judgment pronounced in Lk 10:11.
Revelationrefused receives retribution!
Luke 10:11 'Even the dust of your city which clings to our feetwe wipe off in
protest againstyou; yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come
near.'
Yet be sure - Lu 10:9 De 30:11-14 Ac 13:26,40,46Ro 10:8,21 Heb1:3
MacArthur

REJECTION OF THE MESSAGE
REJECTION FROM THE KINGDOM
Even the dust of your city which clings to our feet we wipe off in protest
againstyou - Woe to those cities that heard this message!
Mattoon- The Lord presents procedures on what to do if they should enter a
town and be rejected. Rejectionwas a reality. There would be folks that would
not embrace the opportunity to put their faith in the Lord. Nothing has
changed. The rejectionof Jesus continues today, even though His resurrection
is confirmed in history. The rejectionof their messagewouldnot change the
message. Evenif the people refused it, the Kingdom of God was still near, but
those who refused it would miss it. Jesus repeatedthe instruction of wiping
the dust of that town from their feetas a public announcement of their doom.
Spurgeonon our feetwipe off - We are not to stop and argue; that is no
business of ours. We have to tell our message. If men will receive it, we are
glad; if they will not hear it, with a heavy heart we turn aside, and go
elsewhere.Our work is to proclaim the glorious message ofmercy through a
dying Saviour, salvationthrough the greatatonement; it is our business to
proclaim it and leave it, the responsibility of receiving or rejecting it rests with
our hearers.
Robertsonon dust of your city - Dust is a plague in the east. Shake off even
that.
Leon Morris - There was a rabbinic idea that the dust of Gentile lands carried
defilement, and strict Jews are said to have removed it from their shoes
wheneverthey returned to Palestine from abroad. The disciples’ shaking of

the dust from their feetwas a testimony againstthem. It declaredin symbol
that Israelites who rejectedthe kingdom were no better than the Gentiles.
They did not belong to the people of God. For the practice cf. Acts 13:51....In
rejecting the preachers they were not simply rejecting a couple of poor
itinerants, but the very kingdom of God, and that has serious consequences.
The people have drawn down judgment on themselves.
The shaking of dust from one's sandals symbolized God's rejectionof those
who rejectedthe message fromHis messengers!In short, the declarationand
the action(shaking off the dust) was giving them what they wantedwhich was
to walk the way they wantedto walk and not in step with God's gospel!Woe
to them! Rememberthat the kingdom of God had come near to them but they
had slammed the door shut in God's face (so to speak). This is why their sin
was greaterthan that of Sodom(Lk 10:12)who had not receivedgospellight
(apparently Lot insteadof being a light to Jehovah, blended in with the
Sodomite societywith no desire to confront them with the truth. I fear many
of us in America are a lot like Lot - fearful of speaking forth God's goodnews
of salvationin Jesus Christfor fear of rejectionand even retaliation!)
MacArthur on dust - It was common for Jews to shake the dust off their
feet—as anexpressionof disdain—when returning from Gentile regions. Paul
and Barnabas also did this when expelled from Antioch (Ac 13:51). This was a
visible protest, signifying that they regardedthe place as no better than a
paganland.
Vincent on dust - Strictly, dust that is raised by walking.
Vincent on clings - "Frequentin medical language of the uniting of wounds."
Robertsonadds "to cling as dust and mud do to shoes. Hence the orientals
took off the sandals on entering a house."

Robertsonon wipe off - [apomassometha]. Middle voice of an old verb
[apomassō], to rub off with the hands. Nowhere else in the N. T. But
[ekmassō], occurs in Luke 7:38, 44.
The kingdom of God has come near - (see notes on kingdom of God on Lk
10:9) The King's ambassadors have come proclaiming the goodnews of the
kingdom.
Hendriksen - They must be told that in rejecting Christ’s messengers theyare
rejecting him … in fact, they are shutting themselves out! The kingdom
cannot be stopped. But rejecters will bring down upon themselves its curse.
Let this be proclaimed to them loudly and clearly, in order that they may still
repent.
See W R Hutton's 3 page article - "The Kingdom of GodHas Come"
Luke 10:12 "I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than
for that city.
that: La 4:6 Eze 16:48-50 Mt 10:15 11:24 Mk 6:11
Luke 10:12-16 A Warning to the Indifferent - John MacArthur
It will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom - Passagessuchas Lk 10:12-13
clearly teachthat there will various degrees orgradations of eternal
punishment depending in part on how much Gospellight was rejected. The

greaterthe light, the greaterthe degree of punishment. I think of this every
time I speak the Gospelto a personand they rejectit. If they go their entire
life and never repent and believe in Jesus as Saviorand Lord, they will be
facedwith eternal punishment worse than the horribly abominable city of
Sodom! This is a very painful and onerous thought which I often have
difficulty shaking!Especiallyif I am in a situation where I frequently see that
individual. May saving recourse is to still continue to pray for their salvation
even if they have soundly rejectedmy presentation of the Gospel.
Cole - Jesus didn’t speculate aboutthe future judgment; He spoke about it
with authority (Lk 10:12)! He makes it clearthat people will be judged
according to the degree of light that they rejected. There will be degrees of
punishment in hell. It will be worse for those who heard plainly of Christ and
rejectedit than for those, suchas Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon, that lackedclear
witness.
Spurgeon- Hearing and rejecting the gospelis the crowning sin of all.
Whateverelse men are guilty of, if they have not rejectedChrist, they have
not yet reachedthe summit of iniquity.
Hendriksen - As there are degrees ofglory (1 Cor. 15:41, 42), so there are also
degrees ofpunishment (Luke 12:47, 48). Sodom, to be sure, sinned grievously
(Gen. 13:13;19:9, 13;Isa. 3:9; Lam. 4:6; 2 Peter2:6, 7; Jude 7); but the cities
selectedby the Lord Jesus Christ for receiving the very specialprivilege of
having his personalrepresentatives sentto them with a pleading and urgent
appeal will have sinned even more grievously if they rejecttheir golden
opportunity. Therefore, in the day of the final judgment their sentence will be
even more terrifying than that which will then be pronounced on Sodom.

Mattoon- Sodom will face God's wrath at judgment day, but cities that
rejectedthe Messiahand his Kingdom will face worse wrathfrom God. A city
as evil as Sodom would be better off than these towns because these folks had
been given the opportunity to believe the Messiah. Theyhad seengreat
miracles and had the GoodNews preachedto them, but they had turned away
and had refusedsalvation. The Lord was making the point that there is
accountability in opportunity. Their accountability would be greaterbecause
of their opportunity to hear the truth.
NET Note - The allusion to Sodom, the most wickedof OT cities from Gen
19:1–29, showsthat to rejectthe current messageis even more serious than
the worstsins of the old era and will result in more severe punishment. The
noun Sodom is in emphatic position in the Greek text.
Sodom in Wikipedia
MacArthur - Sodom and Gomorrah. Those cities and the entire surrounding
regionwere judged without warning, and with the utmost severity.
Matthew has a similar messageforrejectionof the ultimate Messenger
(Matthew 11:20-24)Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of
His miracles were done, because they did not repent. 21 “Woe to you,
Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!For if the miracles had occurredin Tyre
and Sidon which occurredin you, they would have repented long ago in
sackclothand ashes. 22 “NeverthelessI say to you, it will be more tolerable for
Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. 23 “And you,
Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descendto
Hades; for if the miracles had occurredin Sodom which occurredin you, it
would have remained to this day. 24 “Nevertheless Isay to you that it will be
more tolerable for the land of Sodomin the day of judgment, than for you.”

In John's GospelJesus declared
(John 3:18-20)“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe
has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only
begottenSon of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the
world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were
evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the
Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
GENE BROOKS
Luke 10:10 "But whatever city you enter and they do not receive you, go out
into its streets and say,
go out: Lu 9:5 Mt 10:14 Ac 13:51 18:6
MacArthur
RESPONSE TO
REJECTION OF THE GOSPEL

They do not receive you - More discussiontakes place concerning rejection
(the people do not welcome you), as these verses lead into the condemnation of
certain towns for their rejectionof God’s kingdom. (NET Note)
The short answerfor what to do when they rejectthe messageis to walk
away!Woe! This might serve in some way to warn those who rejectthe
messageand give them pause to ponder its significance.
Not receive (1209)(dechomai)means to they do not acceptwith a deliberate
and ready receptionor they do not welcome eitherthe messageand
messenger.
Robertsonon go out into its streets - Out of the inhospitable houses into the
broad open streets. (Where everyone in the city would be able to hear the
horrible words of Lk 10:11! They would have no excuse).
Streets (plateia)refers to the “broad street” which would be the main road in
the city which would allow the greatestnumber of people to hear the
judgment pronounced in Lk 10:11.
Revelationrefused receives retribution!
Luke 10:11 'Even the dust of your city which clings to our feetwe wipe off in
protest againstyou; yet be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come
near.'
Yet be sure - Lu 10:9 De 30:11-14 Ac 13:26,40,46Ro 10:8,21 Heb1:3

MacArthur
REJECTION OF THE MESSAGE
REJECTION FROM THE KINGDOM
Even the dust of your city which clings to our feet we wipe off in protest
againstyou - Woe to those cities that heard this message!
Mattoon- The Lord presents procedures on what to do if they should enter a
town and be rejected. Rejectionwas a reality. There would be folks that would
not embrace the opportunity to put their faith in the Lord. Nothing has
changed. The rejectionof Jesus continues today, even though His resurrection
is confirmed in history. The rejectionof their messagewouldnot change the
message. Evenif the people refused it, the Kingdom of God was still near, but
those who refused it would miss it. Jesus repeatedthe instruction of wiping
the dust of that town from their feetas a public announcement of their doom.
Spurgeonon our feetwipe off - We are not to stop and argue; that is no
business of ours. We have to tell our message. If men will receive it, we are
glad; if they will not hear it, with a heavy heart we turn aside, and go
elsewhere.Our work is to proclaim the glorious message ofmercy through a
dying Saviour, salvationthrough the greatatonement; it is our business to
proclaim it and leave it, the responsibility of receiving or rejecting it rests with
our hearers.

Robertsonon dust of your city - Dust is a plague in the east. Shake off even
that.
Leon Morris - There was a rabbinic idea that the dust of Gentile lands carried
defilement, and strict Jews are said to have removed it from their shoes
wheneverthey returned to Palestine from abroad. The disciples’ shaking of
the dust from their feetwas a testimony againstthem. It declaredin symbol
that Israelites who rejectedthe kingdom were no better than the Gentiles.
They did not belong to the people of God. For the practice cf. Acts 13:51....In
rejecting the preachers they were not simply rejecting a couple of poor
itinerants, but the very kingdom of God, and that has serious consequences.
The people have drawn down judgment on themselves.
The shaking of dust from one's sandals symbolized God's rejectionof those
who rejectedthe message fromHis messengers!In short, the declarationand
the action(shaking off the dust) was giving them what they wantedwhich was
to walk the way they wantedto walk and not in step with God's gospel!Woe
to them! Rememberthat the kingdom of God had come near to them but they
had slammed the door shut in God's face (so to speak). This is why their sin
was greaterthan that of Sodom(Lk 10:12)who had not receivedgospellight
(apparently Lot insteadof being a light to Jehovah, blended in with the
Sodomite societywith no desire to confront them with the truth. I fear many
of us in America are a lot like Lot - fearful of speaking forth God's goodnews
of salvationin Jesus Christfor fear of rejectionand even retaliation!)
MacArthur on dust - It was common for Jews to shake the dust off their
feet—as anexpressionof disdain—when returning from Gentile regions. Paul
and Barnabas also did this when expelled from Antioch (Ac 13:51). This was a
visible protest, signifying that they regardedthe place as no better than a
paganland.

Vincent on dust - Strictly, dust that is raised by walking.
Vincent on clings - "Frequentin medical language of the uniting of wounds."
Robertsonadds "to cling as dust and mud do to shoes. Hence the orientals
took off the sandals on entering a house."
Robertsonon wipe off - [apomassometha]. Middle voice of an old verb
[apomassō], to rub off with the hands. Nowhere else in the N. T. But
[ekmassō], occurs in Luke 7:38, 44.
The kingdom of God has come near - (see notes on kingdom of God on Lk
10:9) The King's ambassadors have come proclaiming the goodnews of the
kingdom.
Hendriksen - They must be told that in rejecting Christ’s messengers theyare
rejecting him … in fact, they are shutting themselves out! The kingdom
cannot be stopped. But rejecters will bring down upon themselves its curse.
Let this be proclaimed to them loudly and clearly, in order that they may still
repent.
See W R Hutton's 3 page article - "The Kingdom of GodHas Come"
Luke 10:12 "I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom than
for that city.
that: La 4:6 Eze 16:48-50 Mt 10:15 11:24 Mk 6:11

Luke 10:12-16 A Warning to the Indifferent - John MacArthur
It will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom - Passagessuchas Lk 10:12-13
clearly teachthat there will various degrees orgradations of eternal
punishment depending in part on how much Gospellight was rejected. The
greaterthe light, the greaterthe degree of punishment. I think of this every
time I speak the Gospelto a personand they rejectit. If they go their entire
life and never repent and believe in Jesus as Saviorand Lord, they will be
facedwith eternal punishment worse than the horribly abominable city of
Sodom! This is a very painful and onerous thought which I often have
difficulty shaking!Especiallyif I am in a situation where I frequently see that
individual. May saving recourse is to still continue to pray for their salvation
even if they have soundly rejectedmy presentation of the Gospel.
Cole - Jesus didn’t speculate aboutthe future judgment; He spoke about it
with authority (Lk 10:12)! He makes it clearthat people will be judged
according to the degree of light that they rejected. There will be degrees of
punishment in hell. It will be worse for those who heard plainly of Christ and
rejectedit than for those, suchas Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon, that lackedclear
witness.
Spurgeon- Hearing and rejecting the gospelis the crowning sin of all.
Whateverelse men are guilty of, if they have not rejectedChrist, they have
not yet reachedthe summit of iniquity.
Hendriksen - As there are degrees ofglory (1 Cor. 15:41, 42), so there are also
degrees ofpunishment (Luke 12:47, 48). Sodom, to be sure, sinned grievously
(Gen. 13:13;19:9, 13;Isa. 3:9; Lam. 4:6; 2 Peter2:6, 7; Jude 7); but the cities
selectedby the Lord Jesus Christ for receiving the very specialprivilege of
having his personalrepresentatives sentto them with a pleading and urgent

appeal will have sinned even more grievously if they rejecttheir golden
opportunity. Therefore, in the day of the final judgment their sentence will be
even more terrifying than that which will then be pronounced on Sodom.
Mattoon- Sodom will face God's wrath at judgment day, but cities that
rejectedthe Messiahand his Kingdom will face worse wrathfrom God. A city
as evil as Sodom would be better off than these towns because these folks had
been given the opportunity to believe the Messiah. Theyhad seengreat
miracles and had the GoodNews preachedto them, but they had turned away
and had refusedsalvation. The Lord was making the point that there is
accountability in opportunity. Their accountability would be greaterbecause
of their opportunity to hear the truth.
NET Note - The allusion to Sodom, the most wickedof OT cities from Gen
19:1–29, showsthat to rejectthe current messageis even more serious than
the worstsins of the old era and will result in more severe punishment. The
noun Sodom is in emphatic position in the Greek text.
Sodom in Wikipedia
MacArthur - Sodom and Gomorrah. Those cities and the entire surrounding
regionwere judged without warning, and with the utmost severity.
Matthew has a similar messageforrejectionof the ultimate Messenger
(Matthew 11:20-24)Then He began to denounce the cities in which most of
His miracles were done, because they did not repent. 21 “Woe to you,
Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!For if the miracles had occurredin Tyre
and Sidon which occurredin you, they would have repented long ago in
sackclothand ashes. 22 “NeverthelessI say to you, it will be more tolerable for

Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you. 23 “And you,
Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will descendto
Hades; for if the miracles had occurredin Sodom which occurredin you, it
would have remained to this day. 24 “Nevertheless Isay to you that it will be
more tolerable for the land of Sodomin the day of judgment, than for you.”
In John's GospelJesus declared
(John 3:18-20)“He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe
has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only
begottenSon of God. “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the
world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were
evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the
Light for fear that his deeds will be exposed.
THOMAS CONSTABLE
Verse 10-11
The Seventy were to declare publicly two things to the towns (i.e, the people of
the towns)that rejectedthem and their message. Theywere to pronounce a
symbolic rejectionfor unbelief (cf. Luke 9:5; Matthew 10:14; Mark 6:11), and
they were to remind the rejecters of the reality of the kingdom offer that they
had spurned. This secondaction was a virtual sentence ofjudgment.
Verse 12
The common characteristic ofSodomand these Palestiniancities was failure
to repent when given a warning by God (cf. Genesis 19:24-29;Matthew 10:15;

Matthew 11:20-24;Romans 9:29; 2 Peter2:6; Jude 1:7). The fate of the people
of Sodom had become proverbial (cf. Isaiah 1:9-10). The Sodomites had the
witness of Lot, but these cities had the witness of forerunners and eyewitnesses
of the Messiah. The Sodomites couldhave saved their city by repenting, but
these cities could have enteredthe messianic kingdom. Therefore their guilt
was greaterthan that of the people of Sodom.
MATTHEW HENRY
They must denounce the judgments of God againstthose who should reject
them and their message:"If you enter into a city, and they do not receive you,
if there be none there disposedto hearkento your doctrine, leave them, Luke
10:10. If they will not give you welcome into their houses, do you give them
warning in their streets." He orders them to (Luke 9:5) do as he had ordered
the apostles to do: "Sayto them, not with rage, or scorn, or resentment, but
with compassionto their poor perishing souls, and a holy dread of the ruin
which they are bringing upon themselves, Even the dust of your city, which
cleavethon us, we do wipe off againstyou, Luke 10:11. From them do not
receive any kindnesses atall, be not beholden to them. It costthat prophet of
the Lord dear who accepteda meal's meat with a prophet in Bethel, 1 Kings
13:21,22. Tellthem that you will not carry with you the dust of their city let
them take it to themselves, for dust they are." It shall be a witness for Christ's
messengersthat they had been there according to their Master's order tender
and refusalwere a discharge of their trust. But it shall be a witness againstthe
recusants that they would not give Christ's messengersany entertainment, no,
not so much as water to washtheir feet with, but they were forced to wipe off
the dust. "But tell them plainly, and bid them be sure of it, The kingdom of
God is come nigh to you. Here is a fair offer made you if you have not the
benefit of it, it is your own fault. The gospelis brought to your doors if you
shut your doors againstit, your blood is upon your own head. Now that the
kingdom of God is come nigh to you, if you will not come up to it, and come

into it, your sin will be inexcusable, and your condemnationintolerable."
Note, The fairer offers we have of grace and life by Christ, the more we shall
have to answerfor another day, if we slight these offers:It shall be more
tolerable for Sodomthan for that city, Luke 10:12. The Sodomites indeed
rejectedthe warning given them by Lot but rejecting the gospelis a more
heinous crime, and will be punished accordinglyin that day. He means the
day of judgment (Luke 10:14), but calls it, by way of emphasis, that day,
because it is the lastand greatday, the day when we must accountfor all the
days of time, and have our state determined for the days of eternity.
Upon this occasion, the evangelistrepeats,
(1.) The particular doom of those cities wherein most of Christ's mighty works
were done, which we had, Matthew 11:20, &c. Chorazin, Bethsaida, and
Capernaum, all bordering upon the sea of Galilee, where Christ was most
conversant, are the places here mentioned. [1.] They enjoyed greater
privileges. Christ's mighty works were done in them, and they were all
gracious works, worksofmercy. They were hereby exalted to heaven, not only
dignified and honoured, but put into a fair way of being happy they were
brought as near heaven as external means could bring them. [2.] God's design
in favouring them thus was to bring them to repentance and reformation of
life, to sit in sackclothand ashes, both in humiliation for the sins they had
committed, and in humility and a meek subjectionto God's government. [3.]
Their frustrating this design, and their receiving the grace ofGod therein in
vain. It is implied that they repented not they were not wrought upon by all
the miracles of Christ to think the better of him, or the worse of sin they did
not bring forth fruits agreeable to the advantages they enjoyed. [4.] There was
reasonto think, morally speaking, that, if Christ had gone to Tyre and Sidon,
Gentile cities, and had preachedthe same doctrine to them and wrought the
same miracles among them that he did in these cities of Israel, they would
have repented long ago, so speedywould their repentance have been, and that
in sackclothand ashes, so deep would it have been. Now to understand the

wisdom of God, in giving the means of grace to those who would not improve
them, and denying them to those that would, we must waitfor the greatday of
discovery. [5.] The doom of those who thus receive the grace ofGod in vain
will be very fearful. They that were thus exalted, not making use of their
elevation, will be thrust down to hell, thrust down with disgrace and
dishonour. They will thrust in to get into heaven, in the crowdof professors,
but in vain they shall be thrust down, to their everlasting grief and
disappointment, into the lowesthell, and hell will be hell indeed to them. [6.]
In the day of judgment Tyre and Sidon will fare better, and it will be more
tolerable for them than for these cities.
JOHN MACARTHUR
A Warning to the Indifferent
Sermons Luke 10:12–16 42-136 Jun22, 2003
A + A - RESET
As we come to our time in the Word of God, we want to return to the 10th
chapter of the gospelofLuke. We have just heard about God's abundant
kindness in that song. One of the expressions of that kindness is the privilege
that the Lord gives to us to proclaim His gospel, to be His ambassadors, to be
His messengers, His emissaries,His missionaries, His witnesses in the world.
What a greatprivilege it is that He would use lowly ones such as we are for
the proclamationof life-transforming, glorious salvationtruth. This is our
greatprivilege. We as believers have the eternal truth of salvation to tell the
whole world. This is, frankly, while we're still here. This is why the Lord
doesn't take us all to heavenbecause there's a work to be done on earth and
that is to proclaim the gospelof Jesus Christto the ends of the world so that
others can hear, repent, and believe. We have the most impactful, the most
transforming, enduring, enriching message, the goodnews of the forgiveness

of sin and rescue from eternal punishment. We are here to tell the world that
God will forgive sinners; that God desires to be reconciledto sinners through
that forgiveness. He will forgive those who repent of their sin and believe in
His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, believe that He died in their place and rose
from the dead. For those who believe, God promises the forgiveness ofall
their sins and a place in the joy and bliss of His eternalheaven.
That's the gospel. And gospelis just an old English word that means good
news, goodnews. So here we are in the world with goodnews. However,
there is an element of the goodnews that is very, very bad news. In fact, the
goodnews is predicated on an understanding of the bad news. The news
about salvation is only goodif one understands the bad news about what
happens to those who don't possess thatsalvation. In fact, part of our
proclamation of the gospelis to tell people the worstnews they've ever heard,
the worstnews there is, that God has createda hell, a place of eternal
punishment for those who rejectHim. And those who do not repent and
believe in the Lord Jesus Christwill spend forever punished in that place
calledhell. That is the bad news that is foundational to the goodnews being
goodnews. True evangelismthen, an accurate presentationof the gospel,
must include the strongestnegative reality as part of the motivation of the
sinner, not just the attractiveness ofheaven, not just the attractiveness ofthe
love of God, but the fear of hell and the dread of the wrath of God. All
faithful endeavors in giving the goodnews must clearly conveythe bad news.
It is not just the promise of heaven; it is the threat of hell.
This emphasis, which is very clear in the Bible, is being eliminated from most
of contemporary, evangelicalwitness as we know it in our experience today.
People don't want to talk about hell. They don't want to talk about judgment.
They don't want to give warnings to those who rejectthe gospel. In fact, they
even begin to think that Godis so loving He just wouldn't really send anyone
to hell. But that is not what the Scripture teaches. In fact, the Bible begins
and ends with warning. You're not very far into the accountof creationin the

book of Genesis until you hear God say, "But for the fruit of the knowledge of
goodand evil, you shall not eatfor in the day that you eatfrom it, you shall
die." And in that Godpromised both spiritual death, physical death, and the
potential of eternal death.
The Bible beganthen with a threat, a warning, and it ends that way. The very
last chapter of the Bible, the 22nd chapter of Revelation, says, "Itestify to
everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to
them God shall add to him the plagues that are written in this book. If anyone
takes awayfrom the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away
his part from the tree of life and from the holy city which are written in the
book." The Bible begins with a warning about death and it ends with a
warning about being excluded from heaven. And in betweenthere are
countless warnings about the judgment of God. Back in Genesis chapter6
God gave a warning in verse 7. The Lord said, "I will blot out man whom I
have createdfrom the face of the earth, I am sorry that I have made them."
And He did it in the greatFloodthat swept acrossthe earth, millions of
people, all excepteight, were catapulted not only into physical death but into
eternal judgment in hell. According to Hebrews chapter6 and verse 2, one of
the principles of Old TestamentLaw was eternaljudgment. It is God who
said, "I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal, nor is there any who can
deliver from My hand," Deuteronomy32:39. God is not just loving; God is
also righteous. He not only blesses. He curses.
Is it not destruction for the wicked, says Job31:3? Is it not disasterfor the
workers ofiniquity? Proverbs 1 says, "Because Ihave called and you refuse, I
have stretchedout My hand and no one regarded. Becauseyoudisdained all
My counseland would have none of My rebuke, I also will laugh at your
calamity, I will mock when your terror comes. When your terror comes like a
storm and your destruction comes like a whirlwind, when distress and
anguish come upon you, then they will call on Me but I will not answer.”
Becausethey hated knowledge and they didn't choose the fear of the Lord.

In Luke 13:3 Jesus reiteratedthis threat of judgment. "I tell you," He said,
"unless you repent you will all perish." Psalm 9:7, "The Lord shall endure
forever. He has prepared His throne for judgment." Psalm96:13, "ForHe is
coming, for He is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with
righteousness andthe peoples with His truth." Acts 17:31, "He's appointed a
day in which He shall judge the world in righteousness by the man whom He
has ordained. He has given assuranceofthis to all by raising Him from the
dead." Romans 2:16 speaks ofthe day when God will judge the secretsof
men by Jesus Christ. Jobsays in Job 21:30 the wickedare reservedfor the
day of doom. Romans 2:5 Paul says, "The sinners are treasuring up wrath
againstthe day of wrath and the righteous judgment of God." And
Revelation6:17 says, "The greatday of His wrath has come and who is able to
stand?" Hebrews 9:27, "It is appointed unto men once to die and after this,
the judgment."
The Bible presents God not only as Saviorand Redeemerbut as executioner,
as judge. It presents Jesus not only as Savior but also as judge. John 5:22 to
27 says that God has committed the actualfunction of judgment to Jesus,
delegating to Him the authority to judge. SecondThessalonianschapter1
says He comes out of heavenin flaming fire, dealing out retribution on those
who obey not the gospel. Everyunbelieving sinner throughout all of time,
throughout all of human history, will be condemned, including false
Christians, including the people of every religion apart from the truth of God
as revealedon the pages of Holy Scripture. The reasonfor this judgment is
sin and guilt before God.
Now listen to this. The more of God's truth you know, the more severe will be
the eternalpunishment. Those people in the Old Testamentwho lived under
the law of Moses will receive a certain level of punishment for rejecting the
work of the law in their hearts which was to lead them to repentance and then
to cry out to God for grace and mercy and forgiveness. The people in the Old

Testamentwho did not respond to the work of the law of Moses in their heart,
repent of their sin, and cry out to God to be forgiven, they will receive
punishment. Those who did not know the law of God, did not respond to the
law of God will be punished. But those who heard the gospel, those who have
heard the messageofJesus Christ, the goodnews of salvationin Him will
receive a greaterpunishment. The more revelationyou have, the greater
punishment you receive if you reject it. The severesteternalpunishment
belongs to those who heard the most and rejectedit.
Let me show you this. Turn, for a moment, to the 10th chapter of Hebrews
and this is a very important portion of Scripture in this discussion, Hebrews
chapter 10 and verse 26. Scripture says, "Forif we go on sinning willfully
after receiving the knowledge ofthe truth..." if you've heard the truth and you
understand the truth, that is the truth of Christ, the truth of the gospel, but
you go on sinning willfully, that is to say you go on in rejection, you willfully
spurn that truth, rejectthat truth of salvationin Christ and Christ alone, if
we go on sinning willfully after receiving the truth, "there no longerremains a
sacrifice for sins." There will be no salvation. If you reject Christ, there's no
way to be saved. That's what the writer is saying. There is no other sacrifice,
there is no other provision. All you have then, verse 27, if you reject Christ, is
a “certainterrifying expectationof judgment.” To rejectChrist leads you
with nothing but to expectjudgment, a terrifying expectationof judgment.
This is described as the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries, the
fiery furious judgment of hell where the worm dies not, the fire is not
quenched, blackness anddarkness forever, weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth in eternaltorment.
So if you having heard the knowledge ofthe truth reject that truth, there is no
other way for you to be savedand all you have to look forward to is the
terrifying expectationof judgment and the fury of the fire of hell. Verse 28
then says, "Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on
the testimony of two or three witnesses." In other words, if you violated the

law of Moses there were severe and deadly consequences. Itwas a serious
thing to violate the Law of Moses.
But notice verse 29, and here's the key. "How much severer punishment do
you think he will deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God and has
regardedas uncleanthe blood of the covenant?" We'llstop at that point.
If you think it's going to be bad in eternity for the people who rejectedthe law
of Moses, it's going to be worse for the people who've rejectedJesus Christ.
There are degrees ofpunishment in eternity. There are degrees ofsuffering in
hell. And the more you know about the gospeland rejectit, the severerwill
be your punishment.
To make it very practical, if you're a non-believer, being in this church and
hearing the gospelis high-risk behavior. You'd be better off to climb Everest
in a snowstormor jump out of an airplane with a parachute with a huge hole
in the middle of it. Or better yet, jump out of an airplane with an umbrella
than to sit in this church and listen to the gospelbecause the implications of
rejecting it are so severe forever. Don't just come here, sit, know more and
more about the gospeland continue in your rejectionand not expect to be
eternally held accountable for that rejection. The severesteternalpunishment
belongs to those who rejectedthe most exposure to the gospel.
You say, "Why are you telling all this to us?" Because this is exactly the point
of the text. Let's go back to Luke 10. This is the point of this text. Let me
pick up the text in verse 12, Luke 10:12. "I say to you, it would be more
tolerable in that day for Sodomthan for that city. Woe to you, Chorazin, woe
to you, Bethsaida, forif the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon
which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago sitting in sack cloth
and ashes. Butit will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment

than for you. And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you?
You will be brought down to Hades,” or hell. “The one who listens to you
listens to Me. The one who rejects you rejects Me. And he who rejects Me
rejects the One who sent Me."
The messagehere is very clear. There are comparative punishments in hell.
The more exposure you have to the glory of Christ, the more potential
judgment you will receive if you reject it.
Turn over to the 11th chapter of Luke. This is not an isolatedteaching from
Jesus, it is oft repeated. In the 11th chapter of Luke verse 29, the crowds were
increasing. He began to say this generationis a wickedgeneration. It seeks...
It was a religious one, it was steepedin Judaistic religion, but it was wickedby
Jesus'judgment. “It seeksfora sign and yet no sign shall be given it but the
sign of Jonah for just as Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites, so shall the Son
of Man be to this generation. The queen of the south shall rise up with the
men of this generationat the judgment and condemn them because she came
from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold,
something greaterthan Solomon is here.”
This is an interesting statement. Jesus is saying the queen of the south, the
pagan, Gentile queen at leastwas so stunned and struck by the glory of
Solomonas to come and give honor to Solomon, and here when a pagan
woman gave honor to a great king like Solomon, she demonstratedthe
appropriate response to the glory of a man. You, who are Jews, who are the
people of God's promise, cannoteven give honor to one far greaterthan
Solomonwho comes to you. And so in the Day of Judgment the queen of the
south, that is to say a pagan, is going to stand up to your condemnation. She
showedan attitude toward a man that you didn't even show toward the Son of
God. You'll be condemned even by what she did.

They hated to be compared to Gentiles in that way. In the 12th chapter of
Luke, verses 47 and 48, again this same kind of comparisonis made. Verse
47: "Thatslave who knew his master's will and didn't getready” or act in
accordwith his will “shallreceive many lashes." It's possible to receive a few
lashes or many lashes, that is to say there will be degrees ofseverity of
punishment in hell. It will all be punishment, it will all be lashes. It will be
fewerlashes or more lashes and the distinguishing element will be whether
you knew your master's will; that is to say whether you knew the truth or not.
Verse 48, "The one who didn't know it and committed deeds worthy of a
flogging will receive but few and from everyone who has been given much,
shall much be required and to whom they entrusted much, of him will they all
ask the more." And that's not talking about blessing, that's talking about
punishment; more punishment for those who rejectedmore truth. You'd be
better off a pagan, never exposedto the gospel. You'd be better off a Jew
living in the Old Testamentthan to be in this environment sitting under the
preaching of the gospeland rejecting Jesus Christ because youwill have a
severerpunishment in hell. To rejectJesus Christ is to bring upon yourself
the severestofall judgments. And the more you reject, the more severe that
eternal punishment becomes.
Go back then to the 10th chapter of Luke. There are six cities here, three Old
Testamentcities and three New Testamentcities and they are being compared
by way of illustration of this comparative principle. The city of Sodom...
Sodom is knownto everybody. Sodom is a byword for...forthe most vile kind
of evil, the wretched, wretchedperversion of homosexuality that literally
characterizedthe city of Sodom, so utterly perverse, a city of wretchedness,a
city of idols, a city destroyed in the most unbelievable destruction of fire and
brimstone recordedon the pages of the Old Testament;Sodom, the very
prototype for judgment, the very prototype for wickedness. And the cities of
Tyre and Sidon are also Old Testamentexamples. They were Gentile cities.
They were pagan cities. Theywere cities given overto idolatry and
materialism and greedand cruelty and every imaginable kind of wickedness.
All the people in Sodom in the days of Sodomwho died were catapulted into a
godless eternity. All the people in Tyre and Sidon were catapulted into a

godless eternity of punishment in hell. Sodom had exposure to the truth from
Lot. Tyre and Sidon had exposure to the truth from many who passedtheir
way. Theyrejectedthe truth. They rejectedthe one true and living Godand
their judgment was severe, their judgment was eternal;that is to saythe
people who were basically sentto perish forever in hell.
The New Testamentcities mentioned here are Chorazin, Bethsaida, and
Capernaum. They will also be punished. But Jesus says here they'll be
punished more than Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon. The Sodomites, the Sidonites,
and the Tyrites will receive lesserpunishment in hell than the people of
Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. Those pagan, wretched, wicked
Gentiles outside the covenant will receive lesserpunishment than the people of
the covenant, the Jews, living in the time of Jesus. This is just a powerful,
powerful indictment; and we will understand adds to the escalating hostility
toward Jesus that eventually causes them to screamfor His death.
Let me just review what's going on here in this section. Youhave to back up
to verse 1 to find out that all of this is what the Lord is saying to seventy, or
some manuscripts say seventy-two. The Lord appointed seventy and sent
them two by two aheadof Him to every city and place where He Himself was
going to come. They're the first wave of missionaries. He already chose
twelve apostles. In addition to the twelve apostles He choosesseventyfrom
among His followers to be these who will go in sort of an advance two-by-two
group to proclaim the gospeland announce His coming into towns and
villages in the remaining months of His ministry. So they're the first group of
missionaries, orwitnesses andas such they teach us a lot, they really do. We
can learn so much from them.
First of all, we already lookedatverses 1 to 4 and said, first, He's concerned
about their attitude. If they're going to go out and proclaim the good news of
the kingdom, the gospelof salvation, they're going to proclaim that Jesus is

the Savior, the Messiah, they have to do it with a right attitude. And we saw
what those attitudes were in the first four verses:compassion, prayer,
urgency, vigilance, and trust. And then after establishing what the attitudes
are, starting in verse 5 and running through verse 11, the focus was primarily
upon the message. And the message, as indicatedat the end of verse 9 and the
end of verse 11, was about the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the
sphere of salvation, the sphere of salvation, the place where God rules over the
souls of those who have come to Him through faith in His Son. And so the
messageis that God has a kingdom and you can enter His kingdom. And you
can enter His kingdom and find peace, or you can rejectHis kingdom and find
judgment. So we've already learned about attitudes and we've already
learned about the message.
Now when you go out to evangelize, it's important for you to remember to be
compassionate, to be prayerful, to undergird your evangelismwith prayer, to
have a sense ofurgency, to be vigilant and to exhibit trust, trust in the truth,
trust in the work of God to bless that truth. It's important that you have the
right message;that you talk about the kingdom, talk about the peace that will
come to those who will enter the kingdom, the judgment that will come to
those who do not. But here's something that usually gets left out of
evangelism. After having the right attitude and the right message, we come to
a third element in His training of the seventy and that is warning, warning.
How do you end a witnessing opportunity? When you give the gospelto
somebody, you proclaim Christ to them, you try to come with a right attitude,
you demonstratedcompassion, you prayed and undergirded your witness,
you...you have a sense ofurgency in compelling them to come. You're
expressing a certainamount of vigilance, understanding what's going on
around you, being wise in the way you do what you do, trusting in God.
You've done all of that. You've given the right messageofthe gospeland you
get shut down. What do you do next? What is....Usuallythe final parting
thing is, "I will pray for you," right? I mean, certainly that's legitimate. But

let me tell you what Jesus tells us to do, OK? What He tells us to do I just
read you in verses 12 to 16. The parting word that Jesus wants these seventy
to give is a warning, is a warning. It is not an affirmation, "I love you
anyway," although you can saythat. That's not the parting word. It is not an
affirmation, "I'll pray for you," although certainly you should saythat. The
final word in an evangelistic endeavoris a warning. It is a warning. The news
is very bad for those who reject, very bad.
And so you have then... Let's just give you three points this morning, number
one, the principle of comparative judgment, the principle of comparative
judgment. I've alreadyillustrated it in the introduction, but notice it is
specificallynoted in verse 12 and verse 14. "I sayto you, it will be more
tolerable in that day for Sodomthan for that city,” verse 14, “it will be more
tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in that judgment than for you." Here's the
warning. "Myfriend, it will be more tolerable in the judgment for people
who have never heard of Jesus Christthan it will be for you having just heard
the gospeland rejectedit. Better you never should have heard this." That's
why I say, hanging around this church is high-risk behavior. It has
implications for all eternity. This is the principle of comparative judgment.
This is first-hand, folks. Just in case youmight think this was hearsay, verse
12 says, "I say to you.” I sayto you, and you pass it on. First-hand from the
judge Himself; I'm telling you from the mouth of Jesus Himself it will be more
tolerable for the people who have never heard of Jesus in hell than it will be
for you. It's not going to be tolerable, but it will be more tolerable than for
you. This is a comparative, from anektos, whichmeans bearable, or
endurable, talking about lesserpunishment. Sodom, Sidon, Tyre will
experience lesserpunishment than Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, or any
other town that saw and heard and rejectedJesus.
Now He says, "In that day" in the middle of verse 12. In what day? It's going
to be more tolerable in what day? In that day. What's that day? Downto
verse 14, "It will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment." So

He's talking about judgment day, isn't He? The Day of Judgment. Now the
Day of Judgment could...couldcertainly covera broad range. It could mean
the day that those people died and enteredinto their eternal punishment. But
I think it's more specific than that. In the 10th chapter of Matthew, Jesus in
the comparative passageto this is recordedto have said, "In the Day of
Judgment," and He puts it together. And also in the 11th chapter of Matthew,
verse 24, "In the Day of Judgment." It's in the Day of Judgment. What is the
Day of Judgment? It's really talking about, I think, the GreatWhite Throne,
the final adjudication, the last tribunal. All the people who die without
believing the truth, whether under the law of Mosesorafter the coming of
Christ, all the people all over the face of the earth go out of the presence of
God forever into a place of punishment and torment. That's illustrated, you
remember, by Jesus'parable of Lazarus and the rich man and the rich man
wants water to tip...to coolthe tip of his tongue because he's in torment.
They're all in torment but they're waiting for their final sentencing on the Day
of Judgment in which they will be castforever into the final hell which is
describedas a lake of fire. And there at that particular time their punishment
will be commensurate with their exposure to the truth of Christ. Revelation
20:11, "I saw a GreatWhite Throne, Him who sat on it from whose presence
earth and heaven fled away and no place was found for them." This is at the
end when the whole of the universe as we know it is uncreatedand disappears
and all the dead, the greatand the small, that is the important and the
unimportant, stand before the throne, they're all brought to the throne. They
receive at that time resurrectionbodies suited for their eternal punishment in
the lake of fire. The books are opened, another book is opened which is the
Book ofLife. The dead are judged from the things written in the Book ofLife
according to their deeds. They come up from the sea, they come up from
death and Hades and they are judged, every one of them, according to their
deeds. All the ungodly of all the ages will be at that tribunal for that final
sentencing and they will be thrown into the lake of fire. There they will be
punished forever. But it will be in that day a lesserpunishment for Sodom
and Sidon and Tyre, and they’re illustrations of those people who lived before
Christ, than it will be for anybody who's been exposedto Jesus Christ,
whether by personal experience because theywere there when He lived, or by

the experience ofhearing the recordof Jesus Christproclaimed through the
Scripture. This is the principle of comparative judgment.
To be exposedto the gospel, to be exposedto Christ either personally, or by
the recordof Scripture is to raise your level of guilt, culpability, and therefore
punishment if you reject. So the principle of comparative judgment, and then
the examples of comparative judgment, that's the secondpoint I want you to
note, the examples. There are three of them, three of them.
The first one, verse 12, "I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for
Sodom than for that city." What city? Verse 10, "Whatevercity you enter
and they do not receive you." Any place you go where the people do not
receive you, when those people who rejectedyour messageaboutChrist, they
didn't reject Christ, He hadn't gottenthere yet, but if they reject the gospelof
Christ, it will be more tolerable for Sodom in the Dayof Judgment than for
the people of that city or town or village.
So here's your message. Go preachthe kingdom. Go offer them peace. But
close the occasion, ifthey reject, with a warning of judgment, a judgment
greaterthan that which God will render againstSodom.
Now Sodom, to anybody who knows the Bible and to any Jew, was the
absolute and utter epitome of wretchedness. We evenhave a word, sodomite,
which links homosexuality with that city because that city was a city of
homosexuality, the grossest, vilestkind of homosexuality. The story of Sodom
is frankly almost beyond all belief. The passions ofthe homosexuality of
Sodom are so aberrant as to be beyond what one could imagine. Do you
remember what happened, Genesis 17, 18 and 19? We won't take the time to
go back but I'll remind you of it.

Just one verse to define the sin of Sodom, it's the 20th verse of Genesis 18. You
can just write it down if you're keeping notes. "And the Lord said, 'The
outcry of Sodomand Gomorrah is indeed greatand their sin is exceedingly
grave.'" What was their sin? Well they were Canaanites. Canaanites were
wretchedto start with. They were cruel, murderous, idolatrous. But there
was more than that. There was not just the normal sin. There was an
exceedinglygreatsin there. And what was it? It was the sin of homosexuality
to the extreme. In fact, if you follow the story, two angels come to Sodom in
the 19th chapterof Genesis andthey come there to warn Lot that God's going
to judge. And the homosexuals in the town see these angels and they are the
most beautiful creatures they've ever seenand excite their perverted passions.
And so they come to Lot's house to rape the angels. And Lot, trying to protect
the angels ofGod from this, offers them his daughters, which, of course, they
didn't want. And God then strikes all of them blind and having been stricken
blind you would think would alter your course a little; change your direction.
But it didn't change anything. Having been completely made blind, it says
they weariedthemselves to find the door to get in to attack the angels;just the
most amazing consuming passions ofperversion. And God, you know,
brought about the greatestdestructionof any city in the Old Testamentwhen
He drowned that city in fire and brimstone.
Now for the Jews, who know that homosexuality is a sin punishable by death,
who certainly disdained that sin, Sodomwould be the most wretchedof
wretchedcities. And Jesus says, "I'lltell you this, any town, any village, any
city that rejects the gospelis going to have worse punishment in hell than
Sodom." This is inconceivable to a Jew. Remember, these people thought
they were the covenant people. They thought they worshiped the true and
living God. They fanciedthemselves that they were religious, they were
faithful. He says you're going to have a hotter hell than Sodombecause
judgment is not limited to the degree ofone's sin; it's much more associatedto
the degree ofone's rejection. That's why I say, sitting under the gospelis very
high-risk behavior. As bad as the people of Sodomwere, when the Great
White Throne judgment comes, and all the ungodly are brought there, the
sentence that falls upon those synagogue attenders in the towns and villages of

Israelthat rejectedthe gospeland rejectedJesus is going to be greater, going
to be greater. It's really an absolutely shocking thing to say, but Jesus is
saying, tell them that, just tell them a more severe hell awaits you for rejecting
Christ than the Sodomites will experience.
The secondillustration is Tyre and Sidon, verse 3, "Woe to you Chorazin, woe
to you Bethsaida, for if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon
which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sack
cloth and ashes. Butit will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the
judgment than for you." The "will be" here also emphasizes what I said that
we're looking forward to a future judgment and that is the GreatWhite
Throne. Chorazin — we don't know much about Chorazin, it's just a little
town, a little village, really two and a half miles from Capernaum.
Capernaum was the main town at the tip of the northern part of the Sea of
Galilee, sortof toward the northwest part of the northern end of the sea.
Chorazin doesn't exist today. It's long extinct. But Chorazin was very close to
Capernaum and Capernaum was the headquarters of Jesus during His
Galileanministry. Chorazin was exposedto Jesus Christ, to His miracles, to
His powerover disease and death and demons and nature. Chorazin heard
His preaching and heard it from the apostles. And He says, "Curse you."
“Woe” means to curse.
"Woe to you, Bethsaida." Wellthat's anotherlittle town on the northwest of
Capernaum, up at the tip of the Sea of Galilee. You can't find it today either.
It's gone. Once locatedouton the Gennesaretplain which is a little flat area,
sort of at the northwestpart of the Sea of Galilee. And, you know, Bethsaida,
we do know about. According to John chapter 1, it was the home of Andrew
and Philip and Peter. Bethsaida, along with Chorazin, had been exposedto
the powerof Jesus, the presence ofJesus, His miracles, His message. And
they rejectedHim. They rejectedHim. And Jesus says if the miracles had
been performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurredin you they would have

repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand ashes. You had so much revelation
and you rejected.
Tyre and Sidon were bad places. Sidonis first mentioned in Genesis 10 as a
Canaanite city, idolatrous, cruel, wicked, sinful. Later it's called the great
Sidon. It had reachedprominence and powerbecause it was where the
Phoenicians were and the Phoenicians were the mariners of ancienttimes and
they ran the shipping business out across the Mediterranean. They were
powerful. They were rich. They were corrupt. It was basicallythrough
Sidon and Tyre that the greatshiploads of wheat grownin Egypt were
transported to the rest of the Mediterraneaneven as far westas the city of
Tarshishwhich is in Spain. It became a very powerful and very pagan and
corrupt city.
Tyre, also in Judges 19 mentioned, is called a fortified city, close neighborto
Sidon. They would today be in Lebanon, north of Israelright on the coast.
They were Phoenicianseaportcities. Tyre was about thirty-five miles north of
Mount Carmel, about thirty miles westof Mount Hermon. And they had
provided some things for Israel. They provided the cedars of Lebanon, you
remember, the timber for Solomon's temple. And they also provided some
sailors for Israel's navy. But they were wickedplaces, full of idols. And God
pronounced destruction on Tyre and Sidon. And maybe in some ways the
most amazing denunciation in the Old Testamentof any city, and I'll show
you why. Turn to Ezekiel28. Prophecies ofthe destruction of these cities
occurin two places, Isaiah23 and Ezekiel28. And we won't have time to read
all of that but...Isaiah 23 and Ezekiel28...butI do want to show you something
that's really very amazing about God's indictment about Tyre in particular,
and then Sidon, which was the sister city. Verse 11 of Ezekiel28, "Againthe
Word of the Lord came to me saying, Son of Man, take out a lamentation over
the king of Tyre." That kind of thing beganback in verse 2, "Sonof Man, say
to the leaderof Tyre." Godhas a messageforthe king, a messageforthe
leaderand it's a messageofcoming destruction and judgment. God is going

to destroy those cities. But in verse 11 it says, "The Lord...the Word of the
Lord came, take up a lamentation over the king of Tyre and say to him, thus
says the Lord God,” listen to this, he's talking to the king of Tyre, “you had
the sealof perfectionfull of wisdom and perfectin beauty, you were in Eden,
the gardenof God." Who's he talking to here? He's talking to who? Satan.
King of Tyre wasn't in the Garden of Eden. Tyre is so bad that the king is one
with Satanhimself. This is like the book of Revelationwhere it says, "You are
where Satan's throne is." And He goes onto describe Lucifer. "Every
precious stone was your covering, the ruby, the topaz, the diamond, the beryl,
the onyx, the jasper, the lapis lazuli, the turquoise, and the emerald, and the
gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets was inyou on the day you
were created." Icreatedyou, He says, the most beautiful being in the
universe.
Verse 14: "You were the anointed cherub who covers." Whatdoes that
mean? You guarded my very throne. The most beautiful angelever made,
depicted in all these images of jewelryas heavenis describedin the book of
Revelation. I placed you there. You were on the holy mountain of God. You
were right there at the pinnacle of the throne.
Verse 15, "You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created,
until unrighteousness was found in you."
Verse 16 says that you were internally filled with violence, you sinned. "I cast
you as profane from the mountain of God." He was thrown out of heaven. "I
have destroyedyou, oh covering cherub."
Verse 17: "Your heart was lifted up because ofyour beauty. You corrupted
your wisdom by reasonof your splendor." This is all about the fall of Satan
here.

Tyre was associatedwith the devil himself. Sodom was associatedwith a
wretchedkind of perversion. But Tyre is associatedwith the devil himself so
that the king and the devil are almost the same. Starting in verse 20 comes the
judgment pronounced againstthe sistercity of Sidon over which the devil was
also ruling.
Now with that in mind, you canturn back to Luke chapter 10. So when a Jew
thought about the Old Testament, whatdid he think about? If you wantedto
pick... If you said to Jewishpeople, "Justpick the worst people in history,"
they would say, "Well, probably the Sodomites becausetheirs was the greatest
obliteration by the hand of God in history, and maybe the Sidonites and
Tyrites, because they're literally inseparable from the devil himself. They
were the worstof the worst. And the Jews consideredthemselves,ofcourse,
at the very opposite end. Over here was Sodom, and Tyre, and Sidon. And
over here were they, the people of God, the favored, the chosen. And God
says, "Whenyou all get to the judgment, it's going to be worstfor you than it
was for them." It's unthinkable. They hated Satan. They hated
homosexuality. He says to them, "If the miracles,” verse 13, “hadbeen
performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurredin you, they would have
repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand ashes." Ifthey had seenwhat you
saw, they would repent.
Why wouldn't the Jews repent? Because self-righteousness is a worse
condition than any; it's harder to reacha person who doesn'tthink they have
a need. Self-righteousness is so damning. Religious people are the hardest of
all. If they had seenwhat you've seen, they would have repented. And so,
verse 14, it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for
you. They would have repented. Theywould have put on sackcloth. That's
black coarse camelhair woveninto a garment that was dark. It was a symbol
of mourning. And ashes were thrown over the person, a symbol of death.
That was a depiction of one's penitence and brokenness andsorrow and

mourning, an oriental custom. You see that all over the Bible, the book of
Jonah, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, Job, Isaiah, Daniel. But when judgment day comes
and you come before that final throne, your punishment will be worse. Tyre
and Sidon were bad. In fact, you know why the Jews hated Tyre and Sidon?
Not only because the prophets deemed that they were literally one with Satan
himself; Amos the prophet said it was the people of Tyre and Sidon that sold
the Jews into slavery. They came and captured the Jews and sold them as
slaves, Amos 1:9. That would increase their hatred, wouldn't it? Joelalso
says, Joelchapter3 verse 6, "They soldIsraelites to the Gentiles." Jeremiah
says they were so bad that the winepress of God's fury was going to crush out
the life of Tyre and Sidon, Jeremiah 25:22, 47:4. So they would think it was
bad and they would agree with the assessmentof Ezekiel, the assessmentof
Isaiah, the assessmentof Jeremiah. As bad as they were the little town of
Chorazin and Bethsaida had people, who when they stand at the final tribunal
before God are going to hear that their judgment is greaterthan that of Tyre
and Sidon. And again I say, this is not a seeker-friendlymessage,this is just
the truth. Shocking.
The third illustration He gives is Capernaum, verse 15. "And you,
Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you?" This is strong. He says,
"Capernaum, I know what you're thinking but you're not going to heaven.
You're not going there." When you finish that evangelistic discussionwith
somebody, the final words are, "Now that you know the truth of the gospel, if
you rejectthis, your punishment is greaterthan the worstof the worstwho
have never heard what you've heard. And furthermore, if you rejectthis,
whateveryou might think, you're not going to heaven." That's the message.
Well, you know, God is loving. Don't you think that He's going to widen His
mercy and all kinds of folks are...? No, you're not going there. You might
think you're going there, you're not going there. In fact, you will be brought
down to Hades. Hades is a generalword that means the place of the dead and
when used as a contrast with heaven, it can only mean hell, and that's the way

it's intended to be used here because in the 16th chapter, 23rd and 24th verses
of Luke, Hades is describedthere as a place of torment. Capernaum, I have
to tell you, you're not going to heaven. You're going to hell, going to hell.
You know what's interesting about this? Capernaum had heard so much,
seenso much, headquarters of the miracle working of Jesus, the headquarters
of His teaching. Centralto all of Galilee by foot or by boat, Jesus pickedthat
to be His headquarters. And you know there's not anything in the four
gospels aboutCapernaum ever being hostile to Jesus. Theynever tried to
throw Him off a cliff like they did in Nazareth. They never tried to run Him
out of town. There's no indication that they persecutedHim, beat Him,
chasedHim away. There's no indication they mockedHim, ridiculed Him,
slanderedHim. They toleratedHim. Indifference is as damning as hostility.
To reject the truth of the gospelof Jesus Christ will render you as guilty as if
you pounded the nails into His hands. The destruction and judgment of
Capernaum came, came physically. If you go there today, there's no
Capernaum there; thriving city in the time of Jesus, not now. And the
disappearance ofCapernaum was so complete that for centuries it was
impossible to know where it even was. And the people in that city who
perished are going to stand before God and receive a severerjudgment than
those who never knew the messageofChrist.
Matthew says in the comparative passagein his gospelthat if the miracles that
were done in Capernaum were done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have
repented. So Capernaum bears the same culpability, having heard and seen
what they did in terms of Christ. How in the world can you have this message
presentedto a Jew without a having hostile reaction? How could the 70 go out
and say, "I just want to tell you, you're going to die and you're going to show
up at the judgment and you're going to be sent to a greaterpunishment than
Sodom and Tyre and Sidon?" It's just beyond their comprehensionand it
just escalatesthe hostility. Or the sinner, feeling the weight of the fearof that
reality, falls on his face and repents.

So we've consideredthe principle of comparative punishment, the examples of
comparative punishment, and finally, the personalizationof comparative
judgment. We've been talking about cities and we've been talking about
towns, but I want you to notice verse 16. We'll stop here. "The one who
listens to you listens to Me, and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and he
who rejects Me rejects the One who sent Me." The one...the one...he.... All
right, now we're getting down to individuals here. We've been talking about
towns but we're really talking about the people in the town and whole towns
of people did reject Jesus, Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, many, many
others. Still even today cities all across the world uniformly reject the gospel
of Jesus Christ with very few exceptions. But it all does come down to the one,
the one “he.” The one who listens to you, He says in verse 16, listens to Me.
The one who rejects you, rejects Me. He who rejects Me rejects the One who
sent Me.
There are going to be people who listen. And the idea of listening here is to
hear with faith and repentance and to believe. If they listen to you when you
give them this message, thenthey're hearing My voice. Boy, what an amazing
reality that is, isn't it? When you speak the faithful messageofthe gospel, it's
the Lord speaking through you. And when they hear, they're hearing Him
and when they don't, they're rejecting Him. It's really not you they're
rejecting;it's Him they're rejecting. It's not you they're receiving;it's Him
they're receiving. That's why you want to make sure you're faithful to the
message. Matthew 10:40 has recordedthat Jesus saidthis similarly, "He who
receives you receives Me, he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me."
When they receive you, they're receiving Christ. When they receive Christ,
they're receiving God the Father, who sentHis Son, right? When they reject
You, they're rejecting Christ. When they rejectChrist, they're rejecting God
who sent Him.

Here were the Jews imagining that they worshiped the true God, believing
that they worshipedthe true God, the CreatorGod, the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, the one God, the God and author of Scripture. They
believed they were worshiping God. He says if they reject you and your
gospelmessage,they not only rejectMe, they rejectGod. It is an illusion that
anybody rejecting the gospelis honoring God. It is an illusion. The one who
rejects you and your gospelrejects Me. The gospelis the test. John 5:23,
"Whoeverdoes not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him."
John 8:42, "If God were your Father, you would love Me." First John 2:23,
"No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoeverconfessesthe Sonhas
the Fatheralso." SecondJohn 9, "Everyone who does not abide in the
teaching of Christ does not have God." I mean, that's the bottom line. You
receive the gospel, you receive Christ. You receive Christ, you receive God.
You rejectthe gospel, you rejectChrist and you rejectGod. This is the
personalizationof this principle. It comes downto what an individual, the
one, the one “he” does with the gospel. Nothing is more serious than to reject
the gospel. Youhave just rejectedChrist and God. You may think you're
religious and you may think you're going to heaven, you are wrong. Foryou
there is a hotter hell than for one who never heard the message. This is how
our...our gospelpreaching must, must end. It's fine to say, "I'll pray for you."
It's fine to say, "I'm concernedabout you." It's necessaryto say, "I warned
you. Having the truth, you have greaterexposure to a severerjudgment." At
the same time, we plead with men, don't we, to be reconciledto God?
Father, we thank You againfor the powerful, powerful words of Scripture.
Thank You that You've given to us this ministry of reconciliation. You have
given to us, the responsibility and the immense privilege of being Your
representatives, preaching Your gospel, being Your witnesses. Firstof all, we
thank You that You savedus, that You brought us to faith and repentance.
We thank You that we can speak and when we speak the truth of Scripture
and the truth of the gospel, it is Christ who speaks through us. It is the Father
as well. And may we know that this high and holy privilege of preaching the
gospelis powerful in its influence, it is a savorof life unto life for those who
believe, it is a savorof death unto death for those who reject. And as Paul

said, "Who is adequate for such a privilege,” to have this kind of influence
when we speak the gospelit has eternalconsequence eitherfor life or
judgment? May we be faithful to go about our witnessing not only with a
right attitude, with an accurate message, but with a commitment to warn
those who have heard of the severity of punishment that awaits those who
having knownthe truth trample it under their feet. If there are any here
today who are in such condition, oh God, may they be rescuednow from this
severerjudgment by embracing the gospelwhich they have to this point
rejected. We pray for Your glory. Amen.
Luke: Sent Out
Sermon by J. Ligon Duncan on April 11, 2010
Luke 10:1-16
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The Lord’s Day Morning
April 11, 2010

Communion Sunday
Luke 10:1-16
“SentOut”
Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III
O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good.
His steadfastlove endures forever.
Let all who fear the Lord say His loving kindness is everlasting.
Let us worship Him.
If you have your Bibles I’d invite you to turn with me to Luke chapter 10 as
we
continue our way through the gospel.

As we look at this passagein which Jesus sends His disciples out again
on a mission, I want you to be on the lookoutfor five things as we read
through
the first sixteen verses of Luke 10.
In Luke 10 verse 2 I want you to see what Jesus tells His disciples to
pray for. In verses 3 to 9 I want
you to see what He tells His disciples to do.
In verse 9, especiallythe end of verse 9, I want you to be on the
lookoutfor the messagethat He gives the disciples, what He tells His disciples
to say. In verses 9 to 12 I want
you to see the response that He tells His disciples to expect, and in verses 13
to 16, I want you to be on the lookoutfor the consequencesofthis mission,
this message, this ministry that He has given to the disciples.
So I want you to see what He tells them to pray, to do, and to sayand
then what He tells them to expectthe response to be and the consequences of
this ministry.
Now let’s pray before we read God’s Word.
Heavenly Father, this is Your Word.
You give it to us for our edificationand so we ask that by Your Spirit You
would open our eyes to behold wonderful things in it.

Teachus what it means to be a disciple from Your Word.
We ask it in Jesus’name.
Amen.
This is God’s Word. Hear it:
“After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of
Him,
two by two, into every town and place where He Himself was about to go.
And He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
Therefore pray earnestlyto the Lord of the harvestto send out laborers
into His harvest. Go your way;
behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves.
Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greetno one on the road.
Whateverhouse you enter, first say, ‘Peacebe to this house!’ And if a
son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him.
But if not, it will return to you.
And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for
the laborerdeserves his wages.Do
not go from house to house.
Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you.
Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to
you.’

But wheneveryou enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its
streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off
againstyou. Nevertheless know
this, that the kingdom of God
has come near.’ I tell you, it will
be more bearable on that day for Sodom
than for that town.
Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!
For if the mighty works done in you had been done in
Tyre
and Sidon, they
would have repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand ashes.
But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre
and Sidon than for you.
And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven?
You shall be brought down to Hades.
The one who hears you hears Me and the one who rejects you rejects Me, and
the
one who rejects Me rejects Him who sent Me.’”
Amen and thus ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired and inerrant Word.

May He write its eternal truth upon all our hearts.
This passagedefines who we are. If
we have professedfaith in Jesus Christ, if we have answeredthe questions
that
have been askedand answeredthis morning by the new members and
communicants,
if we’re communing members of this congregationand have answeredthose
five
questions, then we are disciple-making disciples.
That’s who we are. And this
passageis about that.
This passage, youunderstand, has many specific applications to the unique
circumstance of Jesus’ownlife and ministry and the unique ministry of His
inner circle of twelve disciples and this largercircle of seventy-two
disciples. And this passage has
many direct applications to the work of ministers and missionaries, ofpastors
and church planters, of evangelists and elders.
But I want us to think about the
more generalapplication of this passageto eachone of us as a disciple of the
Lord Jesus Christ because there are things in this passagethat are vital for
all of us who are trusting in Jesus Christ, who count ourselves as followers of

Christ, who have professedourselves to be disciples of Christ. There are many
things in this passage whichspeak directly to our calling as disciple-making
disciples. And I’d like to look
with you at this passageandespeciallyask five questions that are derived
from
Jesus’ownemphasis in this section.
I. Pray for disciples.
And the first is simply this — notice in verse 2 that Jesus tells these
disciples to “pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His
harvest” and I have a question for you.
Are you praying for laborers to go out into the harvest?
Is that a standard prayer of yours?
Jesus is saying that His disciples ought to pray for laborers to go out
into the harvest and I simply ask you — Are you praying for that?
Is that something that’s very important to you?
What’s gottenyou exercisedthis last week?
Maybe the Masters GolfTournament has
gottenyou exercisedor maybe the NCAA basketballchampionship got you
exercised
and fired-up this lastweek, ormaybe politics gotyou fired-up last week for

goodor for ill. What is important
to you? What excites your energy
and your passions? Wellone of the
things that Jesus says excites the attention and the energy and the passionof
His followers, ofHis disciples, is looking out at a field that is white for
harvest and recognizing that there’s not enoughlaborers to bring in that
harvest.
So, this lastweek have you thought about the fact that there are over a
hundred
campuses acrossthe United
States that have an RUM campus ministry?
But do you realize that that means that there are thousands of campuses
across the United States
where there’s no ministry of ReformedUniversity Fellowship?
And has that burdened you?
Have you prayed for the Lord to raise up campus ministers go to there?
Or have you thought about the fact that westof the
Mississippi, per severalhundred thousand people, there is just one
Bible-believing, Gospel-proclaiming congregationof any sort, per several
hundred thousand people westof the
Mississippi?
Or have you thought about how hard the soil is up in

New England and how difficult it is to plow there and have you been
praying for laborers? Have you
thought about the fact that even though there is an explosionof Christianity in
the GlobalSouth. that there are millions and millions of people that have
never
heard the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and they’ve never heard the Gospel,
and
has that burdened you? And has it
led you to pray for laborers to go out?
Jesus says His disciples will pray for laborers to go out into the
harvest. That ought to be one of
the things that’s burdening us, that we’re passionate about, that’s on our
minds
and that we’re praying for. Have
you prayed? Are you praying for
laborers? There’s the first
question that I want to ask.
II. Go and make disciples.
Now here’s the secondthing. What
does Jesus tell His disciples to do in this passage?
Well He sends them out to do what — to make disciples.

It’s not unlike what He tells His disciples to do in the Great
Commission. Go make disciples.
He sends His disciples out into the highways and byways, in this case
especiallyinto the cities and towns of the surrounding region to proclaim the
goodnews of the kingdom of God,
to tell the surrounding villages that the kingdom of God
is drawing near. But He’s telling
them that they are to be disciple-making disciples that they are to go out and
proclaim His Word in order that others will follow Him.
And I want you ask you this question- is
that how you view yourself? Do you
view yourself? Do you view yourself
as a disciple-making disciple? Is
one of the things that you think about yourself, not just where you grew up,
where you were born, where you went to school, what sorority or fraternity
that
you belongedto, what professionyou are in, but as a defining self-identifying
trait — your discipleship? Do
you view yourself fundamentally as a disciple-making disciple?
If you’ve joined this congregation, if you’ve made an answer“yes” or “I do”
to

those five questions, then you have said, “I am a disciple-making disciple.
I am calledto make other disciples.
That’s not just the job of ministers and missionaries.
That’s not just the job of campus ministers and church planters.
It’s not just the job of evangelists and street-preachers.
It’s not just the job of the ministers of this congregationorthe elders
but it is my job personally, as a member of this congregation, to be a
disciple-making disciple.” In fact,
what the ministers and elders of this church exist for is to equip you to do
that job.
That’s not just our job.
That’s your job.
We’re here to equip you for that job.
Is that how you view yourself?
Do you view yourself as a disciple-making disciple?
III. Disciples tell a message.
Third, notice verse 9. What’s the
messagethat they are to give? The
messageis,
“the kingdom of God has come near to you.”

Now Luke is just giving you the nub, the stub, the nearestone sentence
outline of the message thatthey are to proclaim that he possibly can give.
In Luke’s teaching the
kingdom
of God is something that
God does. It’s not something that
we do. And the kingdom of God
is something that fulfills what God promised in the Old Testament.
And the kingdom of God is not what the people of Israelwere expecting,
but it is goodnews that is being proclaimed that through the Messiah, God’s
kingdom and the promises that He made to His Old Testamentpeople are
being
realized in their very presence and they are to respond to that goodnews in
faith and trust in God through His Messiah.
The kingdom of God
is not an earthly or military or political or national kingdom.
The
kingdom
of God is the rule and
reign of God through Jesus Christ in people’s hearts and lives and it’s
manifested by following Jesus and His teaching.
And that’s the messagethat they’re
given to go out and proclaim in the highways and byways.

Application:
And I want to ask you two questions — and this only counts for one of my five
questions — but two questions in relation to that.
1. Do you understand the good news of the kingdom well enoughto articulate
it?
Do you understand it well enough to articulate it?
The New Testamentgives you all sorts of short synopses of that message.
Sometimes we hear Romans 5:8 as a summation of the Gospel, orJohn 3:16
as a summation of the Gospel, or 2 Corinthians 5:21 as a summation of the
Gospel. There are so many passages
in which little Gospelnuggets are found, where the Gospelis summarized.
Can you articulate the goodnews?
If you’re a disciple-making disciple, you ought to be able to articulate
the goodnews, not just the professionals, notjust the elders, not just the
deacons, notjust the ministers, not just the missionaries, notjust the church
planters, not just the campus ministers, but you.
Every disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ ought to be able to articulate
the goodnews of the kingdom. Do

you? Can you?
Now here’s the follow-up question I want to ask in connectionwith that —
2. Are you?
Are you articulating it? Are
you thinking, when you go to that restaurant and you go there fourteen times
a
year, are you thinking, “You know, I want to develop a relationship with the
wait staff so I think I’m going to try and sit at the same table every week and
talk to that waiter, or talk to that waitress, build up a relationship, share
the Gospel. Orare you thinking
about that in relation to your venders or where you go to the grocerystore or
your neighbors. You’re constantly
thinking, “Where canI articulate the Gospel?” andyou’re articulating it.
Is that woven into the fabric of your lives?
If you’re a disciple-making disciple you’ll be thinking about that.
Next, look at verses 9 to 12. Jesus
tells His disciples at the very outset that the response their message willbe
mixed. The response to their
messagewill be mixed. In other words, even if you’re faithful in sharing my

message, don’t think that everybody’s going to acceptit.
Some people are going to rejectit. That’s not our responsibility to
affectthe response. That’s up to
God. Our job is to be faithful in
telling the goodnews, sharing the goodnews, seeking to make disciples. But in
the end, God the Holy Spirit has to make the disciple.
God the Holy Spirit has to draw a person savingly to Jesus Christ.
Our job is to tell the goodnews.
Our job is to be faithful in declaring the Gospeland sharing that good
news.
But let me ask you this question —
3. Do your lives show the evidence of the Gospelthat you’re calledto proclaim
to others?
Is the kingdom of God
evident in your life? It’s very
interesting, here in verse 9 where Jesus tells the disciples to proclaim, “the
kingdom of God has come near to you,” He tells them to do this right in the
context of their having done what – having healed the sick.
In other words, there was a manifestationof the kingdom’s powerand then
they proclaimed the kingdom in this village.

Now what is one of the crucialmanifestations of the kingdom’s powerthat
must be present if we’re going to proclaim the Gospeleffectively in our
community? Our own lives having
been changedby the Gospel. So I’m
asking you again — Is the kingdom of God
evident in your life? Can somebody
say, “You know, I can see that the Gospelis at work in that woman’s life, in
that man’s life. I can see a change of life.
I can see different priorities.
That person loves God not stuff.
That person believes what the Bible says, not what the prevailing culture
around them says. That person’s
ethics bear the marks of believing in Jesus and embracing the teaching of God
in
the Scripture as opposedto the relativistic culture that pervades.”
There’s going to be an evidence in your life if you’re truly a follower
of the Lord Jesus Christ, if you’re a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s going to be an evidence in your life of the rule and reign of God
that will confirm the Gospelthat you’re articulating and sharing.
So I ask you fourthly — Is the kingdom of God
evident in your lives?
And then finally,

4. do you realize the consequence ofthis?
In verses 13 to 16, Jesus makes it clearthat the consequencesofeither
accepting or rejecting His teaching are eternal.
The consequences are eternal.
Look especiallyat the stunning words of verse 16.
“The one who listens to you listens to Me, the one who hears you hears
Me, the one who rejects you rejects Me, and the one who rejects Me rejects
Him
who sent Me.” Do you realize what
that’s saying? That when you share
the Gospelofthe kingdom and people rejectit, they’re not just rejecting you
they’re rejecting Jesus. And if
they’re rejecting Jesus, they’re rejecting the only God there is.
And the consequencesofit Jesus makes crystalclearin verse 13 to 16
are eternal. Do you live life with
that sense ofthe weightiness ofyour Gospelconversations withother people
that lives hang in the balance?
It’s a goodthing for us to think about as we come to this Lord ‘s Table.
We come to this Lord’s Table by grace because Godhas savedus through
Jesus Christ. As we’ve trusted on

Jesus Christ He has acceptedus as righteous, He has forgiven our sins, He has
welcomedus into His family, but He’s
done this in order to make us disciple-making disciples.
And are we doing that? Are
we praying for laborers? Are we
seeking to make disciples? Are we
able to articulate the messageofthe Gospel?
Do we understand that the response is in His hand?
Are our lives changedand do they bearwitness to the words we say?
And do we understand that the consequencesare eternal?
It’s a goodthing for us to think about as we come to the Lord’s Table
today.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, make us disciple-making disciples.
We ask this in Jesus’name.
Amen.
The Sacramentof the Lord’s Supper

Now as we prepare to come to the Lord’s Table let’s take our hymnals in hand
and
turn to number 378, “HearO My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face.”
Be seatedplease. As we come to the
sacramentof the Lord’s Supper, here are the words of institution found in 1
Corinthians chapter 11 beginning in verse 23.
Hear the Word of God:
“ForI receivedfrom the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord
Jesus
on the night when He was betrayed He took bread, and when He had given
thanks,
He broke it, and said, ‘This is My body which is for you.
Do this in remembrance of Me.’
In the same way also He took the cup, after supper, saying, ‘This cup is
the new covenant in My blood. Do this, as often as you drink of it, in
remembrance of Me.’
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the
Lord’s death until He comes.
Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an
unworthy
manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.

Let a personexamine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of
the cup. For anyone who eats and
drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.”
The sacramentof the Lord’s Supper is indeed a sacrament, a sign, a covenant
sign of the relationship betweenGod and His people, the sign that God has
indeed savedHis people and bought them.
It’s a signthat confirms to us God’s promises.
It’s one of those things that reminds us that when the world around us is
yelling that Christ didn’t really live, He didn’t do anything for His people,
it’s that thing that gives us ground in reality.
It reminds us againof the truthfulness and the death and the blood shed
and the body broken for us. It’s
also for us as believers a means of knowing and falling in love again over and
over with our God. It’s a means of
grace, a way whereby we understand again, where we taste again, where we
even
smell the food again, the reality that our Savior, His body was broken and His
blood was shed for us. It is a
means whereby we grow.
But because it is a table for Christians we want to remind you that it is for
those who trust in Christ so we invite to this table, the Lord’s Table, all who

trust in Jesus Christ alone for their salvationas He is offered in the Gospel
and who have joined themselves to the body of Christ, His church.
If you’re not a believer we’re glad that you’re here, but we ask you to refrain
from taking. But we do ask you to
think about what’s going on around you, to think, to wait, to pray, to repent,
and to trust in Jesus Christ. Ask
us questions afterwards. That’s one
of the greatthings about this supper for unbelievers as they come — “Why do
y’all do that? What are you doing?”
And so if you’re an unbeliever and you’re here, ask us questions.
And then let me remind parents that if your children have not yet takenthe
vows
of membership, if they have not yet been examined by the Session, that they
refrain from coming to the table until that time when they too can confess that
they know and love the Lord Jesus.
Let’s pray as we come to the table.
O Father, we come to Your table, the table of Your Son, our Savior, the Lord
Jesus, and we come because Your Spirit has brought us here.

Indeed we come because Jesus Christbecame flesh and He dwelt among us
and we have beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begottenof the Father,
full of grace and truth. Fatherwe
would come this day to acknowledgethat we need You, we need Your help.
As we come to this table today we need to come because You have workedin
us and You have drawn us here. Lord
God, we would come and ask that You would take the common elements here
and that
You would use them as a means of grace for Your children, that You would
cause
us to be reminded that when the bread breaks in our mouth that Your body
really
was broken for us and that when we taste this grape juice, the wine Father,
that
Your blood was really shed for us.
May this be for us who come to this table, for those of us who trust in the Lord
Jesus, may it be a reminder of what He did for us and how He suffered in our
place and may it be also a reminder of how greatYou are and how glorious is
Your grace to us who are sinners.
And may we be filled with Your Spirit that we might go forth and proclaim
Your
name. Thank You for blessing this
time and we ask Fatherthese things in Jesus’name.
Amen.

Becausethis table is a table for believers, let us who believe profess whatwe
believe. Christian what do you
believe?
I believe in God the Father Almighty, Makerof heavenand earth and in Jesus
Christ, His only Son, our Lord, who was conceivedby the Holy Ghost, born of
the
virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried.
He descendedinto hell. The
third day He rose againfrom the dead.
He ascendedinto heavenand sitteth on the right hand of God the Father
Almighty, from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic church, the communion of
saints, the forgiveness ofsins, the resurrectionof the body, and the life
everlasting. Amen.
Let me remind you from Exodus chapter20, the preface to the Ten
Commandments,
so that you won’t get the impression that we read the Ten Commandments
because
we think that if you keepthem you will be good.

You can’t keepthem. We keep
them for a different reason. Hear
this preface:“I am the Lord your
God who brought you out of the
land
of Egypt and out of the
house of slavery. Therefore,
because I have savedyou, here is the way that you live that pleases me.”
And so believer, how do you please Godnow that He has savedyou?
You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not make for yourself in idol.
You shall not worship them or serve them.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Remember the Sabbath day, to keepit holy.
Honor your father and your mother.
You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness againstyour neighbor.
You shall not covet.
The Lord Jesus on the night in which He was betrayed took bread, and when
He had
given thanks He broke it and He gave it to His disciples saying, “This is My
body broken for you. Do this in
remembrance of Me.”
After the same manner, our Savior took the cup, and having given thanks for
it
as we have already done in His name, He gave it to His disciples saying, “This
cup is the new covenant in My blood which has been poured out for many for
the
forgiveness ofsins. Drink of it,
all of you.”
“By grace you have been savedthrough faith and that not of yourselves, it is a
gift of God.

Not as a result of works so that no man may boast.”
“Forwe are His workmanshipcreatedin Christ Jesus for goodworks.”
“The cup
of blessing that we bless, is it not communion with the blood of Christ?
And the
bread that we break, is it not communion with the body of Christ?”
“He who sparednot His ownSon, but delivered Him up for us all,
how
shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?”
“Herein is love, not that we loved Him but that He first loved us.”
Let us pray.
We give You thank, O God, that we have been privileged to sit again, or for
the
first time, at Your table and we thank You too for those who once sathere and
now sit at Your table in the home of many mansions.
Help us we pray by the Holy Spirit.
Preserve us from the wiles of Satan.

Keep us faithful to the vows which we made when we first became
communicants in Your church. Grant of Your mercy that when for us the
busy fever
of this life is foreverhushed and our joys here are ended and our toils are
done, we may have perfect communion with You in that kingdom where Your
saints,
Your redeemed, are forevermore.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord we ask it.
Amen.
JOHN GILL
Verse 11
Even the very dust of your city, which cleavethon us,.... The Syriac version
adds, "to our feet";and so in Beza's mostancient copy, and the Arabic and
Persic versions read, "which cleaves to our feet"; which agrees with Matthew
10:14.
we do wipe againstyou: for a testimony againstthem, that they had been with
them, and were rejectedby them; See Gill on Matthew 10:14, Mark 6:11.
notwithstanding be ye sure of this; they might assure themselves of this, and
which will be an aggravationoftheir guilt, and increase their punishment
another day:

that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you; was at their very doors, since
the ministers of it, of the Gospeldispensation, the harbingers of the Messiah,
who were sent to publish his Gospel, to proclaim him as king, and de clare
that his kingdom was at hand, had been with them, and they had despised
them.
Verse 12

PETER PETT
Verses 10-16
Woes On Those Who Will Not Receive the Message ofHis Disciples (10:10-
16).
Inevitably all the wolves will not respond, and we now recognise thatJesus’
messageis not only one of mercy but of judgment. His words here are severe.
If His disciples are persistently rejectedthey are to shake the dust of the cities
that rejectthem from their feet. That will be a sign that they are cut off from
Israeland that in the coming judgment they will be dealt with by God. For in
line with what John said about Him He has come both in Holy Spirit and in
fire (Luke 3:16-17). It is a reminder that although in Luke 4:19 He had closed
the book after reading of the ‘the Lord’s year of acceptability’, the day of
vengeance ofGod would one day also come (Isaiah61:2).
Analysis.
a “But into whatevercity you shall enter, and they receive you not, go out into
its streets and say(Luke 10:10).
b “Even the dust from your city, which cleaves to our feet, we wipe off against
you, nevertheless know this, that the Kingly Rule of Godis come near” (Luke
10:11).
c I say to you, it will be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that
city” (Luke 10:12).

d “Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida!for if the mighty works had
been done in Tyre and Sidon, which were done in you, they would have
repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand ashes” (Luke 10:13).
c “But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment, than for
you” (Luke 10:14).
b “And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You will be brought
down to Hades” (Luke 10:15).
a “He who hears you, hears Me;and he who rejects you rejects Me;and he
who rejects Me, rejects Him who sent Me” (Luke 10:16).
Note that in ‘a’ they do not receive the disciples, while in the parallel by not
receiving the disciples, Jesus is not received, and thus they rejectthe One Who
sent Him. In ‘b’ the dust of their feet is wiped off againstthem, and yet the
Kingly Rule of God has come near them, while in the parallel they think
themselves exaltedto Heaven but they are brought down to the dust, to Hades.
In ‘c’ and its parallel are the declarations that it will be more tolerable in the
judgment for infamous cities than for them. And centrally in ‘d’ is the
declarationof judgment on the cities in question.
Verse 12
“I say to you, it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that
city.”
Once they had done this it would bring that city or town into a position where
it would be seenas worse than Sodom in the day of Judgment. For with all its

sins Sodomhad not rejectedthe Kingly Rule of God. The Rabbis would claim
that the inhabitants of Sodomwere so wickedthat they would not rise againat
the lastday, for the fate of the people of Sodom (Genesis 18:16 to Genesis
19:22)had become proverbial (compare Isaiah 1:9-10). How much more
doomed then the city which turned its back on the Kingly Rule of God. This
does bring out how seriouslytheir messageand mission was to be viewed.
Verse 13-14
“Woe to you, Chorazin! woe to you, Bethsaida!for if the mighty works had
been done in Tyre and Sidon, which were done in you, they would have
repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand ashes. But it shall be more tolerable
for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment, than for you.”
Jesus then extended His words to covercities and towns that He had already
visited. The inhabitants of Chorazin and Bethsaida had had their opportunity.
They had seenmighty works multiplied before them. But even then many of
them had not turned to God in order to find forgiveness and a new life. They
had had no change of heart and mind and will (they had not repented). Yet if
Tyre and Sidon, famous for their arrogance againstGod(Ezekiel28), had
seenwhat they had seen‘they would have repented long ago in sackclothand
ashes’. And His conclusionis that in the day of Judgment it would be better
for Tyre and Sidon than for Chorazin and Bethsaida. The words are powerful
and memorable, and a reminder of the seriousness ofnot responding to the
Gospel. Theydo not in factmake Tyre and Sidon’s position at the judgment
any better.
By these words Jesus is emphasising the hardness of heart that there was
among many Jews, andsuggesting that it was less so among Gentiles, a factor
which Luke no doubt expected his readers to gather, and which we will
discoverfulfilled in Acts. For while the point being made here is by a
comparisonbetweentwo Jewishtowns and long past cities famed in Scripture

for their failings, and is to that extent exaggerated, it is also significant that
Jesus is by it suggesting thatthese two Gentile cities are now ripe for
conversion. It is preparing for the outreach to them in the future, indicated as
having takenplace in Acts 21:3-6. We note also that Jews from those cities
had already been seeking Jesus (Luke 6:17), and it was in the region of Tyre
and Sidon that He would heal the Syro-phoenician’s daughter (Mark 7:24-31).
Sackcloth(often made out of goat’s hair) and ashes were worn, or could be sat
on, to indicate deep mourning and often therefore genuine repentance from
sin (see 1 Kings 20:31-32;2 Kings 19:1; 1 Chronicles 21:16; Nehemiah9:1;
Esther 4:1-3; Joel1:13; Amos 8:10).
On the other hand we must recognise thata number of the residents in these
two Jewishtowns would almost certainly have responded to Jesus and His
message, (Philip the Apostle came from Bethsaida - John 1:44; John 12:21)so
that His words are to be seenas really addressedto the hardened majority
who had clearlyproved such a disappointment to Jesus. We actually know
very little about His work in these two towns (see Mark 8:22-26), a reminder
of the huge amount that we do not know about Jesus’ministry, and which is
also a reminder of how much material was available to Luke that he did not
use. His problem was not lack of material but having too much of it (compare
John 21:25). Our uncertainty about the archaeologicalwhereabouts ofthese
towns may be seenas demonstrating how completelythese judgments were
initially carried out, although Chorazin may be the modern site Kerazeh, two
miles north eastof Tell Hum (which in turn may have been Capernaum). But
in the lastanalysis it is the day of Judgment, after the resurrection, that will
find them out (John 5:28-29).
‘Woe to you.’ Some would translate this as ‘alas to you’, a grief-strickencry
from the heart, although it is probably both. But either way God was dooming
these cities.

J. C. RYLE
Further Instructions of Christ to the Disciples, Luke 10:8-16
And into whatevercity you enter, and they receive you, eat such things as are
setbefore you: And heal the sick that are therein, and sayunto them, The
kingdom of God is come near unto you. But into whatevercity you enter, and
they receive you not, go your ways out into the streets of the same, and say,
Even the very dust of your city, which cleaves onus, we do wipe off against
you: notwithstanding be you sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come
near unto you. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day
for Sodom, than for that city. Woe unto you, Chorazin! woe unto you,
Bethsaida!for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which
have been done in you, they had a great while ago repented, sitting in
sackclothand ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the
judgment, than for you. And you, Capernaum, which are exalted to Heaven,
shall be thrust down to Hell. He that hears you hears me; and he who despises
you despises me;and he that despises me despises him that sentme.
These verses comprise the secondpart of our Lord Jesus Christ's charge to
the seventydisciples. Its lessons,like those of the first part — have a special
reference to ministers and teachers ofthe Gospel. But they contain truths
which deserve the serious attention of all members of the Church of Christ.
The first point we should notice in these verses — is the simplicity of the
tidings which our Lord commanded some of His first messengersto proclaim.

We read that they were commissionedto say, "The kingdom of God is near
you."
These words we should probably regard as the key-note to all that the seventy
disciples said. We can hardly suppose that they said nothing else but this
single sentence. The words no doubt implied far more to a Jewishhearerat
the time when they were spoken — than they conveyto our minds at the
present day. To a wellinstructed Israelite, they would sound like an
announcement that the times of Messiahhad come — that the long promised
Savior was about to be revealed — that the "desire of all nations" was about
to appear. (Haggai2:7.) All this is unquestionably true.
Such an announcementsuddenly made by seventy men, evidently convinced of
the truth of what they said, traveling over a thickly peopled country, could
hardly fail to draw attention and excite inquiry. But still the message is
particularly and strikingly simple.
It may be doubted whether the modern way of teaching Christianity, as a
generalrule — is sufficiently simple. It is a certain fact that deep reasoning
and elaborate arguments are not the weapons by which God is generally
pleasedto convert souls. Simple plain statements, boldly and solemnly made,
and made in such a manner that they are evidently felt and believed by him
who makes them — seemto have the most effecton hearts and consciences.
Parents and teachers ofthe young, ministers and missionaries, Scripture-
readers and district visitors — would all do wellto remember this. We need
not be so anxious as we often are about fencing, and proving, and
demonstrating, and reasoning out the doctrines of the Gospel. Notone soul in
a hundred was ever brought to Christ in this fashion. We need more simple,
plain, solemn, earnest, affectionate statements ofsimple Gospeltruths. We

may safelyleave such statements to work and take care of themselves. They
are arrows from God's own quiver — and will often pierce hearts which have
not been touched by the most eloquent sermon.
The secondpoint we should notice in these verses — is the greatsinfulness of
those who rejectthe offers of Christ's Gospel. Our Lord declares that it shall
be "more tolerable at the last day for Sodom," than for those who do not
receive the message ofHis disciples. And He proceeds to saythat the guilt of
Chorazin and Bethsaida, cities in Galilee, where He had often preachedand
workedmiracles, but where the people had nevertheless notrepented — was
greaterthan the guilt of Tyre and Sidon!
Declarations like these are particularly solemn. They throw light on some
truths which men are very apt to forget. They teachus that all will be judged
according to their spiritual light — and that from those who have enjoyed
most religious privileges, most will be required. They teach us the exceeding
hardness and unbelief of the human heart. It was possible to hear Christ
preach, and to see Christ's miracles — and yet to remain unconverted!
More importantly, they teachus that man is responsible for the state of his
own soul. Those who rejectthe Gospel, and remain impenitent and
unbelieving — are not merely objects of pity and compassion, but deeply
guilty and blameworthy in God's sight. God called— but they refused. God
spoke to them — but they would not regardHim. The condemnationof the
unbelieving will be strictly just. Their blood will be upon their own heads. The
Judge of all the earth will do right.
Let us lay these things to heart, and beware of unbelief. It is not open sin and
flagrant profligacy alone which ruin souls. We have only to sit still and do
nothing, when the Gospelis pressedon our acceptance — and we shall find

ourselves one day in the bottomless pit! We need not run into any excess of
heinous sin. We need openly oppose true religion. We have only to remain
cold, careless,indifferent, unmoved, and unaffected — and our end will be in
eternal Hell.
This was the ruin of Chorazin and Bethsaida. And this, it may be feared —
will be the ruin of thousands, as long as the world stands. No sin makes less
noise, but none so surely damns the soul — as unbelief!
The lastpoint that we should notice in these verses — is the honor which the
Lord Jesus is pleasedto put upon His faithful ministers. We see this brought
out in the words with which He concludes His charge to the seventy disciples.
He says to them, "He who hears you, hears Me; and he who despises you,
despises Me;and he who despises Me, despisesHim who sent me."
The language here used by our Lord is very remarkable, and the more so
when we remember that it was addressedto the seventy disciples, and not to
the twelve apostles. The lessonit is intended to conveyis clearand
unmistakable. It teaches us that ministers are to be regardedas Christ's
messengersand ambassadorsto a sinful world. So long as they do their work
faithfully — they are worthy of honor and respectfor their Master's sake.
Those who despise them, are not despising them — so much as their Master.
Those who reject the terms of salvationwhich they are commissionedto
proclaim, are doing an injury not so much to them — as to their King.
Let us remember these things, in order that we may form a right estimate of
the position of a minister of the Gospel. The subjectis one on which error
abounds. On the one side, the minister's office is regardedwith idolatrous and
superstitious reverence. On the other side, it is often regardedwith ignorant

contempt. Both extremes are wrong. Both errors arise from forgetfulness of
the plain teaching of Scripture.
The minister who does not do Christ's work faithfully, or deliver Christ's
messagecorrectly— has no right to look for the respectof the people.
But the minister who declares all the counselof God, and keeps back nothing
that is profitable — is one whose words cannotbe disregarded without great
sin. He is on the King's business. He is a herald. He is an ambassador. He is
the bearerof a flag of truce. He brings the glad tidings of terms off peace.
To such a man, the words of our Lord will prove strictly applicable. The rich
may trample on him. The wickedmay hate him. The pleasure-lovermay be
annoyed at him. The covetous may be vexed by him. But he may take comfort
daily in His Master's words, "He who despises you, despises Me." The last day
will prove that these words were not spokenin vain!
CHARLES SIMEON
THE DANGER OF REJECTINGTHE GOSPEL
Luke 10:10-16. Into whatsoevercityye enter, and they receive you not, go
your ways out into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of your
city which cleavethon us, we do wipe off againstyou: notwithstanding be ye
sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you. But I sayunto
you, that it shall be more tolerable in that day for Sodom, than for that city.
Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida!for if the mighty works

had been done in Tyre and Sidon, which have been done in you, they had a
greatwhile ago repented, sitting in sackclothand ashes. Butit shall be more
tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment, than for you. And thou,
Capernaum, which art exaltedto heaven, shalt be thrust down to hell. He that
heareth you hearethme; and he that despiseth you despiseth me; and he that
despisethme despisethhim that sent me.
NOTWITHSTANDING allthe care which our Lord took to prepare the
minds of men for the receptionof his Gospel, his success wasvery small,
insomuch that after his resurrectionand ascensionto heaven, his disciples
amounted to no more than five hundred. He foresaw it would be so; and when
sending forth his seventydisciples into all the places whither he himself was
about to come, he guarded them againstthe offence which the contracted
influence of his word might occasion. He directed them how to act towards
any city which should not receive them: they should express towards its
inhabitants the indignation of God, and should make known to them both
their iniquity and their folly. In confirmation of what he instructed them to
do, he himself denounced his judgments againstthe cities that had rejected
him; and then proceededto give a generaladmonition to all to whom his
Gospelshould come.
Were we addressing ministers, we should considerthe subject more
immediately in relation to them: but in an address intended only for private
Christians, it will be more profitable to wave what relates to the conduct of
the ministry, and to suggestrather such reflections as are applicable to
mankind at large, especiallythat part of them which is disobedient to the
Gospelof Christ.
I. How awful is their obduracy!

[Our Lord complained that the cities to which he had ministered had resisted
such means as, if used for the awakening of the inhabitants of Tyre and Sidon,
or even of Sodom and Gomorrha, would have been effectualto bring them to
repentance:“they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand
ashes.” Now,without stopping to inquire, why Godwithheld from Sodomthe
means of grace whichwould have been effectual, and vouchsafedthem to
Jewishcities, where he knew they would not be effectual, (a question which no
human wisdom cansolve,)we would call your attention to this fact as
illustrated in the present day.
We acknowledgethat the hearers of our Lord had many and greatadvantages
which we have not: but on the other hand, we have greatadvantages which
they had not. We admit, that they were instructed by One who “spake as
never man spake;” and that they saw the mighty works whichhe wrought in
confirmation of his word: but on the other hand, the meanness ofhis
appearance and of his followers was a stumbling-block, which it was
exceeding difficult to getover, and which is entirely removed out of our way.
Besides, theysaw the plan of Christianity only in a very obscure and partial
light; whereas we see it in all its fulness and completion: and the evidence we
have from that greatmiracle of all, his resurrectionfrom the dead, is stronger
than all those which they beheld. We may, therefore, justly saythat our
advantages are greaterthan theirs: and yet multitudes hear the Gospelnow,
and are unmoved by it: some sneerat it as folly and enthusiasm; and others
rest in a mere formal professionof it, without any experience of its
transforming power. What then shall we say of them? Are not they blind and
hardened in a very awful degree? Are not they also more obdurate than the
idolatrous Syrians, or the filthy Sodomites? Yes:far less evidence, and an
obscurerstatement of the Gospel, would have brought them to “repentin dust
and ashes;” whereas the unbelievers of the present day are proof againstan
accumulatedweight of evidence, and againstthe full splendour of evangelic
truth.

Let this then be consideredby us: and when we wonder at the blindness and
obduracy of the Jews, letus remember how blind we ourselves have been, and
how unaffected by the most stupendous miracles of love and mercy that ever
were vouchsafedto men.]
II. How heinous their guilt!
[Unbelief is in generalscarcelyeverthought of as a sin: the open infidel
justifies himself by a pretended want of evidence;and those who maintain a
form of religion fancy themselves possessedofsaving faith: so that, whatever
men have to condemn in their own conduct, they never think of bemoaning
their unbelief. But behold what was Christ’s judgment respecting this! He
consideredunbelief as a more heinous sin than any which Tyre and Sidon, or
even Sodom and Gomorrha, had committed, and as involving his hearers in a
deeper condemnationthan any to which the vilest of those cities would be
doomed. He also commanded his Disciples to “wipe off the dust from their feet
againstthose who receivedthem not,” in tokenof God”s indignation against
them, and his abandoning of them to the evil of their own ways [Note: Acts
13:51.]. Nor canwe wonder at it, when Christ and his Fatheridentify
themselves with all the ministers of the Gospel:“He that heareth you, heareth
me; and he that despisethyou, despiseth me; and he that despiseth me,
despisethhim that sent me.” What a view does this representationgive us of
unbelief! And how little idea have the unbelieving world of the light in which
they are regarded by a holy God! But when once the Holy Ghostis sent into
their hearts to convince them of sin, they become convinced of this sin in
particular; and view it in its proper colours, as a mixture of ignorance,
impiety, and rebellion.
Let the towering imaginations of the formalist then fall to the ground: let the
most decent amongstus see what guilt he has contracted:and let every one
acknowledge thatGod is just in consigning over to perdition those who, either

in theory or in practice, rejectChrist, and thus eventually “make Godhimself
a liar.”]
III. How greattheir folly!
[The seventy Disciples were especiallycommanded to testify to those who
rejectedthem, that the contempt which they manifested for their message did
not at all invalidate the truth or importance of it: “Notwithstanding, be ye
sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come unto you.” Thus must we say to
those who disregardthe Gospel:“Your unbelief cannot make the faith of God
of none effect.” If your neglectof the Gospelcould set aside its authority, so
that you should stand excusedfor your disobedience to it, your folly would not
be so great:but you cannot alter one single word in it: Christ will still be the
only Saviour of the world, though you should pour ever so much contempt
upon him: and faith in his name will be the only means of obtaining an
interest in him, though you should dispute ever so much againstit: and that
declaration, “He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall
be damned,” will be carried into execution, howeveryou may complain of its
harshness and severity. The ridicule and contempt poured on Noahwhilst
building the ark, did not at all affectthe truth of his warnings:the flood came
preciselyas he had foretold, and sweptawayall the inhabitants of the earth.
And so will it be in the day of judgment: the Gospelwill prove true, and its
sanctions will be executed, “whether men will hear it or whether they
forbear.” What folly and madness then is it to trifle thus with the words of
life! Common sense, methinks, should lead men to considerwhat they hear,
and to searchthe Scriptures daily whether these things be so. If they can
disprove the truth of the Gospel, well:let them then despise it if they please:
but if they cannotdisprove it, let them obey it; and that not in a partial and
formal manner, but unreservedly, and with their whole hearts.]
IV. How pitiable their condition!

[Could we behold the present state of those who once inhabited Sodomand
Gomorrha; could we see their weeping, their wailing, their gnashing of teeth,
how would our bowels yearn over them! Yet, grievous as their condition is, it
is more tolerable than that which is prepared for the despisers of the Gospel.
This is not declaredonce, but often; and that, too, by him who will assignto
all their proper doom. Say, then, whether we should not be filled with pity
towards the thoughtless, deceived, and deceiving world? Suppose them
enjoying all that earth cangive; yet, with such prospects before them, who
must not regardthem as objects of the tenderestcompassion? Beholda man
just about to be rackedupon the wheel, or to be burned on a slow consuming
fire; give him what you will preparatory to his sufferings, you cannot but view
him with most heartfelt grief. Thus then should we view the contemners of
Christ, whether they manifest that contempt in a wayof open infidelity or of
secretdisaffection. There will be degrees ofmisery, indeed, proportioned to
the degrees ofguilt which eachhas contracted;but the leastmiserable of those
who perish under the light of the Gospel, will have a heavier doom than shall
ever fall to the lot of Sodom and Gomorrha. O that our head were a fountain
of tears to run down for them night and day; and that we might labour, all of
us, whilst yet there is time, to pluck them as brands out of the burning!]
Advice—
1. Let all who hear the Gospelconsidertheir responsibility—
[The generality think little but of hearing such or such a man: but be it known
to you, that the word you hear is “not the word of man, but of God,” and is to
be so received, if it be agreeable to his revealedwill. You know that an
ambassadoris the representative of his king, and that the reception or
rejectionof his messageis consideredas affecting, not him, but his master who
sent him. So it is with the ambassadors ofChrist [Note:Text, with John

13:20.]— — — O that whenever we attend upon the house of God, we might
attend as if Christ himself were come down to instruct us, or as if God the
Father spoke to us by an audible voice from heaven!]
2. Let them improve their privileges—
[It is an inestimable privilege to have the Gospelfaithfully administered to us.
What if Sodom and Gomorrha had enjoyed that privilege? they would have
repented long ago in sackclothand ashes, and would probably “have
remained to this very day.” So, if millions that are now in hell had heard what
we have, they would perhaps have obeyedthe truth and been savedby it. We
are sure that many have made a far better improvement of it than we;and
therefore we should humble ourselves on a view of our unprofitableness, and
labour to bring forth fruits worthy of the culture bestowedupon us.]
10:12-16 The Fearful Dangerof Rejecting Christ
Previous Next
Luke 10:12-16 “I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than
for that town. Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!For if the
miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon,
they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand ashes. Butit will
be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you,
Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, youwill go down to the
depths. He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but
he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

In this passageour minds are being directed to an area of Galilee which has
come to be knownas the ‘evangelicaltriangle.’The reasonfor that
designationis because Jesus andhis disciples had pervaded that district with
the evangel, the gospel. There were these three towns, Korazin, Bethsaida and
Capernaum, and there was the area within the triangle they formed, and
there were also the hills and plains surrounding those places. The three
communities are mentioned in our text, and it is salutary for us to know what
happened in those places. Theirnames are not difficult to pronounce, and
their stones speak outeven today. Their messageis plain and direct; “Great
privileges alone can’t save you from the judgment of God.” The people who
lived in those favoured places have constituted a warning ever since about the
danger of meeting with Jesus Christ, but not letting him saving influence over
you.
1. THERE WERE THREE FAVOURED TOWNS ON THE SEA OF
GALILEE
These three towns are around the northern end of the Sea ofGalilee, where
the river Jordanflows into the lake. Thirteen miles further south the river
flows out of the lake and down the Jordan valley 90 miles to the Dead Sea. The
north of the Sea of Galilee was the area that the Lord Jesus made his home
after bidding good-bye to his family in Nazareth. He had been baptized by
John and then beganhis public ministry. He lived during much of those first
two years in Capernaum on the shores of the lake, but he often walkedto
Korazin and Bethsaida.
i] Bethsaida. We start with Bethsaida because itwas the largestof the three
towns. It had been there at leasta thousand years, since the time of David, and
in Jesus’day it was a walled town with city gates. It was a market town selling
such produce as lambs, goats, wine, olive oil, grapes, barley, linen and dried
fresh waterfish. It was under the jurisdiction of Herod’s brother, Philip

Herod, who was a popular ruler. During the lifetime of the Lord Jesus the
Roman Emperor’s wife Julia died, and so Philip Herod increasedthe status of
Bethsaida pronouncing it to be a city and renamed it ‘Julia’, but that was not
popular and it didn’t catchon. Philip Herod also had a temple built in the
city, but the cult lasted only 80 or so years.
Simon Peterand his brother Andrew came from Bethsaida, and so did Philip.
Then James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are also believed to have come
from Bethsaida. So here were five localboys from prominent families, well-
known in the community with lots of relations and boyhood friends. These
intelligent young men gave up everything and followedJesus. I wonder what
the effectof that was on the populace of Bethsaida. I have said for years that if
ten men in Aberystwyth were soundly converted and earnestly followedthe
Lord Jesus the impact on our community would be great.
The Lord Jesus preachedin Bethsaida. On a plain, about a mile or so from the
city, he preachedto five thousand men who’d eagerlyfollowedhim there (that
would have been most of the male population of Bethsaida and both the other
towns), and they had listened to what he’d said until late in the day. They had
no food and it was there that Jesus had broken five loaves and two fishes and
multiplied them and fed them. There was also a well-knownlocalfigure, a
blind man in Bethsaida who lived by begging for money; Jesus gave him his
sight. So that was the privileged town of Bethsaida.
ii] Capernaum. This town was a few miles westof Bethsaida on the north
shore of the Sea of Galilee, and, as I said, it was Jesus’home town during his
ministry. Someone provided a kind of prophet’s chamber where he’d stay.
The town had a fine synagogue which was built out of the localstone, black
basalt. It was in Capernaum that a Roman army officer came one day to
Christ. He askedour Lord if he would heal his servant, and the Jewishleaders
in Capernaum (who commonly hated the Romans)urged our Lord to do what

he asked. “He loves our nation,” they told him, “ . . . and he has built our
synagogue.”Christhealed the servant without even visiting him. When the
centurion got back home they told him that the man had recovereda few
hours earlier at the very time he’d been asking Jesus for help. The Lord Jesus
often preachedin Capernaum synagogue. There was a memorable sermon in
which he said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be
thirsty . . .” and that was preachedthere, his words echoing on the basalt
walls.
Outside the town, on a mountainside, Jesus preachedthe Sermon on the
Mount. The alluvial soil in the area is five feet think and any house builder
would need to go down a long way to reach the bedrock. I am telling you that
because the Sermon on the Mount ends with the parable of the wise and
foolish builders only one of whom establishedhis house on the rock. In
Capernaum Jesus was preaching to crowds of people day after day. They
packedaround the house where he was speaking sitting on the window sills,
standing in the door-ways not wanting to miss a single word. Four friends
brought a paralyzed man to Christ in the middle of the meeting, and in their
frustration to bRing him to the feet of our Lord they finally opened up the
roof to let him down to Jesus that he might be healed. That took place in
Capernaum. Peterand his wife and family finally moved from Bethsaida
there; perhaps Peter’s wife came from the town. Capernaum was the place
where Jesus healedPeter’s mother-in-law. So this well-knownolder womanin
the community owed her life to the mercy of the Lord Christ.
iii] Korazin. This town was up in the hills of Galilee about two miles north of
Capernaum. Archaeologistshave found a stone chair from its synagogue
beautifully decorated. It’s in the Israel museum in Jerusalemtoday. Jesus
once criticized the teachers ofthe law using this phrase to describe them, they
‘sit in Moses’seat.’Thatwas the name given to their ministries because
preachers in the synagogue actuallysatdown while they taught. It’s possible
to visit the ruins of that synagogue today. These three towns were full of plain,

hard-working people who made a living from the land and the lake. They
were in a triangle, as close togetheras Aberystwyth, Penrhyncochand Borth.
It was a triangle where hills and valleys, homes and communities had heard
the gospeland seenthe miracles of the incarnate Creator.
So we would conclude that this was a nice place to live. It provided easyaccess
to Jerusalemand its shops and Temple. It was on the trade route from
Jerusalemto the Med. and so there was always movement and bustle,
horsemen, caravans and soldiers passing through. These were years ofpeace –
under the watchful eyes of Rome. It was a period of prosperity, of building
and trade and educationwhere a fisherman like Peterlearned to speak Greek
with considerable sensitivity, as his later letters indicate. The climate was
pleasant;there was plentiful accessto waterin the driest seasons.Nottoo
large, not too small.
This was a place with a greatheritage. This was an area knownto David and
Moses andAbraham. The people there knew the Scriptures, and so they knew
the reasonwhy this whole cosmos existed – God had createdit. They knew
why death and suffering were in the world – man had rebelled againstGod.
They had the ten commandments and knew the kind of life their Creator
expectedof them. They knew of the love of the God who spoke through the
prophets, promising that he would send one day the Messiahwho would
redeem them. They had the Sabbath, the blessedday of rest eachweek;they
had the covenants and the promises. They had the sacrificesand the altar in
Jerusalemwhere they could find forgiveness ofsins. A prophet had told them
that though their sins were like scarletthey could be as white as snow.
Such a history and such knowledge wasanotherenormous privilege, but more
than all of that, these towns had the Son of God in their midst for a couple of
years. He lived there; he ate and drank among them; he visited their homes;
he preached there – in the streets, in houses, in fields and on the hillsides.

Mothers brought their children to him for him to command God’s blessing to
rest on them. The common people heard him and marveled at his words. He
wrought the most breath-taking miracles in their midst. Every sick person
who was brought to him was healed. Did he give sight to the blind? Did he
cure a withered hand? Did he cleanse a leper? Did he cause the lame to leap
for joy? Did he castour demons? Did he raise the dead? He multiplied a few
loaves and fishes and fed a multitude. Sights that not even Moses andthe
prophets had seenwere seenby the people who lived in this triangle. How
favoured they were. They knew him and he knew many of them by name.
2. THOSE PRIVILEGES DID THEM NO LASTING GOOD.
They had the Scriptures, but they didn’t believe. They had the Sabbath day of
rest, and synagogueswhere they assembledtogetherfor worship – Jesus was
always there on the Sabbath; that was his custom – but they didn’t believe.
They had the Ten Commandments telling them what was right and wrong,
but they didn’t believe. They had the promise of the Messiah, but there was no
desire to see him coming. They had men in the community of maturity and
integrity whose lives were transformed by Jesus Christ; these men spoke
warmly about him with words of wonder, but it made no impact on them.
They personally knew women whose incurable diseaseshadbeen healed by
our Lord but they simply shrugged. They were actually fed by those few
loaves and fishes that Jesus keptmultiplying on the grassyplain, but even that
failed to change their minds. He preachedwith authority; his speaking was
nothing like their scribes. “Neverman spake like this man,” some of them
said, but they didn’t gethungry to devour this truth for themselves. What
more did they want? What more did they need in order to bow the knee to
him and cry, “My Lord and my God.” They had all that, but none of it was
enough to change them. All the privileges in the world aren’t enoughto save
one single person. Lot’s wife had a righteous man as her husband and faithful
Abraham as her uncle. King Saul had Samuel as his prophet. Judas had Jesus
as his example. Demas has Paul as a companion. None of those men became

serious about serving God. Some of you are dreaming that if you had better
privileges then that would change you, for example, having a stirring orator,
seeing the dead raised – if only you experiencedthat, you think, then you’d
become a happy Christian, you would walk with God, but these people saw all
these miracles, and they heard the Son of God preaching. They watchedhis
life day by day, and saw how others were influenced by it, but still they
refused to change their minds. They remained as unbelieving as they’d been
before he’d turned up in their towns. He was always the outsider as far as
they were concerned. . . “not one of us.”
3. THE LORD CONDEMNED THEIR UNBELIEF.
We often meet that phrase today, ‘unconditional love.’ No matter how people
behave, how cruelly they treat you or your children, what base ingratitude
and rejectionthey show you, what monstrous tortures they inflict, we are told
that there is just one response we may give as Christians, and that is
‘unconditional love.’ How different was Jesus here. He did his greatest
miracles in this evangelicaltriangle and yet the people who lived there and
saw and heard everything would not believe in him, refusing to follow him.
They raised an eyebrow, had a discussionaboutJesus of Nazarethat the city
gates, and then they turned awayand had a glass ofwine and talkedabout
Herod’s antics or the latestnews from Rome. The Son of God wasn’t that
important.
What was Jesus’response, simply to go on quietly loving them
unconditionally stroking their affections? It was not. He solemnly said to
them, “Woe to you! Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!” It’s at the
heart of our text. It’s a word of pain in Hebrew and in Greek sounding like
this, ‘yAh, yaa.’ It is the figure of speechwe call onomatopoeia;it means what
it sounds like, a gaspof pain and horror at what is happening. ‘yAh, yaa.’
“Woe to you,” meaning, “Grief to you now and in the future. Sorrow and

misery to you today and in the time to come;terrible calamity lies before you
if there’s not some change in you soon.” Those weren’tthe words of final
judgment; there is still a delay; so there is time to repent, but if you go on
hardening your hearts, then it is ‘yAh, yaa.’Woe lies before you. A terrible
curse will fall on you. Know this, men and women, because it was said by the
one who raisedthe dead – the same one who spoke and the hurricane heeded
him. He said, ‘yAh, yaa’ to them, and he said it because he loved them. He
didn’t sulk when they turned their backs on him. He continued to speak to
them, but now it was very solemnly, with words of warning. There would be
no more signs and no more invitations. A sinful and adulterous generation
seeks fora sign. “Woe to you . . .”
The country has been shockedthis week by the trial of two boys not yet
teenagers who had almost killed two little boys, just stopping because they got
wearyof slamming into them with bricks in their hands as they lay on the
ground. The perpetrators of these tortures were two unloved children exposed
from the earliestage to drugs, drink, pornography and many a beating –
before they were ten years of age;they had known wretchedboyhoods of
much rejection. “Woe to you parents for raising your sons like that . . . yAh,
yaa . . .” It will be woe for the boys, and their parents, yes, it’s been an
unspeakable storyof woe. But my point is this, actually to meet the Lord Jesus
in the beauty of his person, in the conviction of his teaching, in the presence of
his supernatural actions and to turn awayand shrug your shoulders clinging
to your own little life means for you ‘yAh, yaa’, “woe!”
Then Jesus lays on them another solemnword: “I tell you, it will be more
bearable on that day for Sodomthan for that town” (v.12). Sodomwas a
centre for sexualpromiscuity, for homosexualrape. You put them both in the
balances, Capernaumin one balance with all its religion, and traditions, and
prosperity, and Jewishorthodoxy, and the presence of Jesus and his followers.
Then in the other balance you put Sodom and its abuse of women and
children, boys and girls. God is weighing up both. The question is this. For

which one will it be more bearable in the day of judgment? Both are guilty
before God, but the lessercondemnation, will it be Sodom’s or Capernaum’s?
“Sodom,” saidJesus. Its condemnation will be less severe than Capernaum’s.
What did Sodom have? Lot and his air-head wife and daughters. What did
Capernaum have? It had Jesus. It had the sermon on the mount. It had the
feeding of the 5,000.It had the healing of the sick. It had transformed Peter,
and Andrew, and Philip, and James, and John. The city had had Everests of
blessing but it said, ‘No.’ Sodom just had the molehill of Lot. The greaterthe
privilege the greaterthe responsibility and the greaterthe condemnation.
Think of Tyre and Sidon, seaporttowns on the Mediterraneanthat were
infamous for their wickednessallacross the Med. Jesus compares them to
Korazin and Bethsaida who were also fishing towns on the Sea of Galilee.
Tyre and Sidon were outside the nation of Israel but the question is this, what
would it take to transform such places, to make them quiet, just, pure and
safe? Whatwould it take to make them godly, full of love for Jesus Christ, the
happiest places in the world? It would simply take what the towns in the
evangelicaltriangle had been seeing and hearing for the past months, a visit of
Jesus, the preaching of the Saviour and his mighty signs which confirmed that
what he said was true. “Forif the miracles that were performed in you had
been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting
in sackclothand ashes” (v.13).
How has it been with you? Have you had many privileges? Have you had a
Christian upbringing? Have you Christian parents? Have you been taught the
children’s catechism? “Who made me? God made me. What else did God
make? Godmade all things. Why did God make all things? For his ownglory.
Where do we learn about God? In the Bible.” Were you takento a gospel
church? Was the climax of the worship the Word of God opened up and
preachedto everyone? Were there many godly men and womenthere, young
and old, whose lives had been changedby Jesus Christand whose daily living
reflectedhim? Was it a missionary-minded church? Were the greathymns of

the church sung? Did you have Sunday schoolteachers?Did you have godly
officers? Was Jesus Christand him crucified often placardedbefore you? You
can sayyes to all of that. Then you are a favoured person. Then seek the Lord
while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near! You’ve been the
beneficiary of much light and warmth, but light and warmth can both
enlighten and harden. Better, Jesus says, in the day of judgment, never to
have heard of the name ‘Jesus’than to hear all you have heard and roll your
eyes, shrug your shoulders and go away. Better to have lived your entire life
as an unrepentant sinner in Sodomthan to live your entire life in unbelief in
Capernaum, but better still don’t go on in unbelief. Go now to the Lord was
says to you, “Come to me.”
The people of Bethsaida were not like the people of Nazareth. In Nazareththe
men wanted to throw Jesus off a cliff and kill him. There is no recordof that
degree of oppositionin the evangelicaltriangle. They admired him there and
listened to his preaching and marveled at his mighty works, but still they did
not bow before him and cry, “My Lord and my God.” You can always find
ways of minimizing Jesus while speaking respectfullyof him. They always
made him an option; he was always ‘some day’; he was never now. But Jesus
is never an option. He is the God of the universe; the only God there is. Better
never to have seenthe blind man healed than to have seenhim and smiled and
wondered and walkedoff none the wiser. Betterto be sick and not cured than
to be healedand not give glory to God. Better not to experience Godthan to
experience God and stay the same as you were.
4. THE LORD JUDGES THE HEART.
The media get properly outragedat gross immorality. God is a far more
demanding judge. Men condemn the outward appearance but God examines
the heart. Above all he looks to see how we are treating his beloved Son. We’ll
only have to continue to sit and do nothing when the claims of the Lord Jesus

Christ are pressedupon us to find ourselves one day inescapablyand eternally
in the pit. We won’t have to blaspheme the name of Jesus orbecome
criminals. We’ll just have to keepsaying, “The jury is out about Jesus”all our
lives. There is a quiet way to the pit. No sin makes less noise but as certainly
damns the soul as the sin of unbelief. Think of a woman who has given her life
to her husband, caredfor him in every possible way, forgiven him all his
misdeeds, raisedhis children, been loving and warm to him all the time
they’ve been married, and then one day he tells her he is leaving her because
he doesn’t believe that she loves him. What wickedunbelief; what a
monstrous attitude; what more could she have done for him? She has been a
most wonderfully loving wife. Such unbelief as shownby her husband – “I
don’t believe she loves me” – is sinful unbelief. You see my point? God has
given you all these proofs of his love, and his willingness to save you. Hear the
words of the Lord Jesus, see the life of Christ in four gospels, andin all the
letters in the New Testamentthat explain his life and death, and look at the
way his life has impacted the people who surround you in this place. Is your
response to say that that’s not enough evidence to believe that Jesus is God?
That is the sin of unbelief and it will take you to the pit.
What more would you want to prove this claim is true, “Godhas come into
our midst in the form of his Son, Jesus Christ”? What more would you ask
from an incarnate God? You’d perhaps expecthim to say a command and
immediately the winds and waves would obey him, if he were God. They
obeyed Christ. You would want this person to show a life of transparent
innocence, warm affection, extraordinary patience, utter self-control, total
integrity and greatmercy, so that when they were driving nails through his
hands and feet he would be praying to God for their forgiveness. Thatis
exactly what we find in Jesus Christ. You would want the most mind-blowing
inspirational teaching, words that lifted you, convictedyou, knew you,
changedyou. Those are the very words of Christ. You would want him to be
more powerful than death. The Lord rose from the dead on the third day. In
other words if you were listing the requirements that you would make of a
man who also claimed to be one with God you would find everything of
heaven and yet of earth too, plus much more in the life of Jesus ofNazareth.

Yet you can continue to trifle with Jesus. How can you escape ifyou neglectso
greatsalvation?
The letter to the Hebrews is full of the glories ofJesus Christ, and then the
writer pauses and he addresses them very earnestly. He is warning professing
Christians, “See to it, brothers, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving
heart that turns awayfrom the living God” (Hebs. 3:12). In other words, he
does not hesitate to bring a messageofwarning to professing Christians.
Many of our town’s churches now have evangelicalpulpits and the
community has its share of moral and religious people, just as there were
many in this evangelicaltriangle in the first century. The greateststumbling
block then, as now, to decentliving people was this messagethat their sins
needed atonement. A decent life alone is insufficient and imperfect; only
through the coming of Jesus Christthe Son of God to become the Lamb of
God could there be forgiveness. The proud Jew who lived in the evangelical
triangle believed he had everything; he didn’t need Jesus Christ. He turned a
blind eye to his ownsins, his stealing, his adultery, his idolatry, his law
breaking. Listen to Paul addressing his fellow countryman in Romans chapter
two: “Now you, if you call yourself a Jew;if you rely on the law and brag
about your relationship to God; if you know his will and approve of what is
superior because you are instructed by the law; if you are convinced that you
are a guide for the blind, a light for those who are in the dark, an instructor of
the foolish, a teacherof infants, because you have in the law the embodiment
of knowledge and truth – you, then, who teachothers, do you not teach
yourself? You who preach againststealing, do you steal? You who say that
people should not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who abhor
idols, do you rob temples? You who brag about the law, do you dishonour
God by breaking the law?” (Roms 2:17-23). You yourselves are law-breakers
in the sight of God, and you have also ignored God’s Son Jesus Christ. Woe to
you now! Woe to you in the day of judgment. Betterbe a Sodomite than have
had the privileges you’ve had and refuse the offered Saviour. You are dealing
with a God who judges the heart.

5. HOW AWESOME IS THIS LORD.
What you have here is Jesus Christ the judge. He who warned us about the sin
of judging others because ourknowledge ofthem is so limited can judge
because he knows everything. Here in our passagehe claims to know what’s to
come. He knows the future of the lives of the people who lived in the
evangelicaltriangle. He knows the futures of eachone of us. He knows how it
will go with us in the day of judgment if we refuse to change, orif we change.
He who rejects me rejects him who sentme. He often informs us with all the
authority of heaventhat this is a moral universe, that there is a day of
judgment. He knows all the different contingencies ofthe future. Some
philosophers claim that even God doesn’t know the future, that it is wide open
to God as well as to us, but here we find Jesus Christspeaking confidently
about future certainties. He even knows whatwould happen if things had been
different for us, the things we dream about. He knows all the possible
permutations of events. If you had been born at a different time . . . if you had
moved somewhere elsein your life . . . if you had married someone else . . . if
you had come under the influence of certain other people . . . then what would
have happened to you? Things you think about, how different your life might
have been, and whether you would have been happier or sadder. We all think,
“I wonder how it would have been if . . .” But the Lord actually knows
exhaustively about all such permutations.
What if the Seedof the Women, the promised Messiah, had come much
sooner, 3000 years soonerthan he had, and he had gone to Sodom and had
preachedto the people of that town then what, we wonder, would have
happened? Jesus tells us here; “This is what would have happened. There
would have been a greatrevival in Sodom. That city would have repented in
sackclothand ashes. Theywould have been sickenedoftheir sin; they were
satiatedwith it, and with what relief would they have heard of salvation, and
cleansing, and scarletsins washedwhiter than snow! They would have

embracedthe Saviour and gone to him for rest. Jesus tells us here that that
would have happened.
But the towns of the evangelicaltriangle were prosperous and respectable and
religious communities. They were not Sodom, and they thought Jesus’crude
preaching of repenting of sin and believing on him, and taking up a cross and
following him was a messageaimedat stupid evil men. It was not for educated
moral people as they consideredthemselves, and they rejectedour Lord. Jesus
could really see them on the day of judgment, meeting Almighty God. He
would say to the people of these three towns, “I gave you the opportunity of
meeting my Son. What did you do to him? Did you come to him? Did you bow
down and worship? Did you follow him? Did you live for him? Did you
proclaim him by life and lip? What did you do with my Son?” “We didn’t do
anything with him” “Departfrom me ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared
for the devil and his angels. Woe to you, better to have lived and died
unbelieving in Sodom than to live and die knowing Jesus and ignoring him.”
I don’t know how much knowledge youhave, greator small. The more
important question is what are you doing with the knowledge you have? Are
you sweeping it out of your lives? Have you hardened your heart againstthe
Lord this past week? There’sbeena duty before you and you’ve turned away
from it. There’s a temptation and you failed to resistit. There is forbidden
fruit and you have takenit. There’ve been blessings receivedand you’ve not
thanked the Lord for them. God has been so merciful to you for so long. Don’t
grieve his Spirit. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger,
and abounding in steadfastlove.
31stJanuary 2009 GEOFFTHOMAS

Third Millennium Study Bible
Notes on Luke 10:8-20
The kingdom of God is near - Luke 10:8-16
Here we note the simplicity of the message;"The kingdom of God is near
you" (Luke 10:9; cf. Luke 10:11). Ryle states, "To a well-taughtIsraelite, they
would sound like the announcement that the times of the Messiahhad arrived,
that the long-promised Saviour was about to be revealed, and that the desire
of the nations was about to appear (Haggai2:7)." Not only was there a
"message"ofthe Kingdom, there was also its "majesty" - heal the sick (Luke
10:9).
However, the Kingdom messagenow only includes the blessings of its King,
but also the cursings that accompanyit if people do not acceptthe message!
'Woe to them' (Luke 10:13), "the kingdom is near" (Luke 10:11). Jesus says,
"I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town"
(Luke 10:12). The implication being that Sodom was totally destroyed, but the
the death of those that do not acceptthe messageofthe King will be forever
destroyed.
in Luke 10:13-15, Jesus says:
"Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!Forif the miracles that were
performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have
repented long ago, sitting in sackclothand ashes. But it will be more bearable
for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And you, Capernaum, will
you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths.

Here we see God's sovereignty. Godwithheld certain miracle from "Tyre and
Sidon" and it was destroyed. If these miracles would not have been withheld
then God would not have destroyedthese towns and the people within them,
as they would have repented (cf. Matt. 11:20-24). So, here we observe that
God DOES NOT desire the salvationof all men without exception (cf. 1 Tim.
2:1-7 below), as Jesus only died for a specific people - his elect(Eph. 1;4, 5, 11;
Rom. 9, etc.).
The ministry and messageofthe 70/72 was authoritative, as is the message
that is properly delivered today! Jesus says, "He who listens to you listens to
me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent
me" (Luke 10:16). Stein says, "This saying envisions only two possible
responses to the preaching of the seventy(-two). People would either
receive/listenor not receive/notlisten. No distinction is made between
receiving the messengers(Luke 10:8, 10;9:5) and receiving/hearing the
message(Luke 10:16).
The seventy-two returned - Luke 10:17-20
The 70/72 returned with "joy." Though "joy" may be expressedin different
ways by different individuals at various times, it is a characteristic ofsalvation
(Luke 1:14; 2:10; 8:13; 15:7, 10; 24:41, 52).
The demons submit to the name of Jesus. ThoughLuke does not mention the
powerto castout demons in Luke 10:1-16, it is rightly understood from Luke
9:1-2 that the missionof the 70/72 included such power. God's Kingdom
(Luke 10:9) and the defeatof Satan/demons (Luke 10:17-18)are brought
togetherin Luke 11:20.
The name of Jesus should not be understood as some magicalspell or
incantation. It refers to the powerof Jesus (Acts 19:13;cf. Col. 2:15).

Jesus says, "Isaw Satanfall like lightning from heaven" (Luke 10:18). The
tense of the verb here is inceptive aorist, thus it should be understood as "I
was seeing." So, Luke understoodeachexorcism by the 70/72 as
demonstrating the defeat of Satan. Hendriksen quoting Godetsays, "[Jesus
meant] While you were expelling the subordinates [the demons] I was seeing
the master[Satan] fall." He goes onand adds:
One important item should be added to this interpretation: in all probability
the Master's exaltedlanguage, "Iwas watching Satanfall from heavenlike
lightning," was not only a reference to this one event, namely, the successof
the seventy-two, but rather to all similar events that would take place
afterward. In other words, Jesus viewedthe triumph of these seventy-two as
being symptomatic of ever so many other victories overSatan throughout the
course of the new dispensation, triumphs accomplishedthrough the work of
thousands of other missionaries. He was looking far into the future (cf. Matt.
24:14). He saw the ultimate discomfiture of the ugly dragon and all his
minions.
The casting out of demons demonstrated the defeat of Satan. It demonstrates
that the Kingdom of God and its King has come (cf. Luke 11:20-22).
As to the phrase "I have given you authority to trample on snakes and
scorpions and to overcome all the powerof the enemy," Hendriksen says:
Note the following:

a. Jesus oftenmade use of figurative language, thoughsuch language was
frequently interpreted literally (Matt. 16:6-12;Luke 8:52, 53; John 2:19-21;
3:3, 4; 4:13-15;6:51, 52; 11:11-13, etc.).
b. In the immediately preceding passage (verse 18)the Lord had used
symbolical language whenhe spoke ofseeing Satanfalling from heavenlike
lightning.
c. If elsewhere Satanis called"dragon" and "serpent" (Rev. 12:9; 20:2), why
should it be strange if also here in Luke 10:19 the domain of the prince of evil
is calledthat of snakesand scorpions? Is it not Satans intention to poisonthe
minds of men and to impart the sting of death to all who oppose him?
d. There is no recordof any literal fulfilment of this statement.
e. The true interpretation is also supported by the explanatory expression"(I
have given you authority over) all the power of the enemy." For explanation
see Rom. 16:20, "The God of peace will sooncrush Satanunder your feet."
As to the promise, And nothing will in any way hurt you, see John10:27, 28;
Rom. 8:28-39.
The ability to castout demons does not mean one is necessarilysaved(cf. Acts
19:15, etc.). While it glorifies God and one should be joyful that at the name of
Jesus everyknee bows (Phil. 2:10, et. al.), Jesus says, "do not rejoice that the
spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." For
the electthe casting out of demons is insignificant as compared to the ultimate
glory of being saved;that is of having one's name recorded in heaven's book

of life (Isa. 4:3; Dan. 12:1; Rev. 3:5; 20:12, 15). Casting out of demons is a
temporary affair, while everlasting salvationto God's glory alone, never ends.

Jesus was severe in his warnings

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