And take your Bibles, please, and turn to the book of Leviticus. If you’re using the Pew Bible, the reading will be found on page 98 of that Pew Bible. We’ll be reading from Leviticus chapter seven, starting in verse 28, and reading through verse 36. Leviticus 7, 28 through 36. Listen to this. This is the very Word of God. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the people of Israel, saying, Whoever offers the sacrifice of his peace offerings to the Lord shall bring his offering to the Lord from the sacrifice of his peace offerings. His own hands shall bring the Lord’s food offerings. He shall bring the fat with the breast, that the breast may be waved as a wave offering before the Lord.
The priest shall burn the fat on the altar, but the breast shall be for Aaron and his sons. and the right thigh you shall give to the priest as a contribution from the sacrifice of your peace offerings. Whoever among the sons of Aaron offers the blood of the peace offering and the fat shall have the right thigh for a portion. For the breast that is waved and the thigh that is contributed I have taken from the people of Israel out of the sacrifices of their peace offerings and have given them to Aaron the priest and to his sons as a perpetual due from the people of Israel. This is the portion of Aaron and of his sons from the Lord’s food offerings from the day they were presented to serve as priests of the Lord. The Lord commanded this to be given them by the people of Israel from the day that he anointed them. It is a perpetual due throughout their generations.
And then for our New Testament reading and the text of this morning’s sermon, we go to Luke gospel according to Luke, and we’re beginning chapter eight this morning. Chapter eight of Luke’s gospel, looking at just those first three verses. Luke chapter eight, verses one through three.
Soon afterward, Jesus went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. And the twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities. Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chusa, Herod’s household manager, and Susanna, and many others who provided for them out of their means.
That’s the reading of God’s Word. Let’s ask his blessing upon it now. Our Father, we thank you for the Holy Scriptures. We thank you that they were written for our instruction. We thank you that all Scripture is breathed out by you and is profitable for us. And so we humbly pray that you would make it profitable to us even this day. For we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.
If you peeked and looked ahead, you see that immediately after the passage we just read comes the parable of the sower. And there’s so much in that. I haven’t decided for certain how long we’re going to take on the parable of the sower. But these three verses before us also have an important message for us. You might be scratching your head and thinking, what are we going to get out of this? Or what does this have to do with me? But if you think back to the Old Testament reading, that gives you a clue.
There was a series, maybe still is, a series of National Geographic television programs or videos that they produced. And in this series, the title of any given show was Inside, and then it was some organization, some group. And I would watch some of these with my sons when they were young. One of the ones I specifically remember watching with them was titled Inside the Green Berets.
So it was a feature about the U.S. Army Special Forces. And you had an embedded reporter at one point in the video. These were documentaries. And an embedded reporter went with a Special Forces A-Team on a patrol in Afghanistan. And they actually saw some action and it’s all documented right on this but but the purpose of the video was to show what life is like on a day to day basis in the special forces.
We also watched one titled Inside the Secret Service. And I have an uncle who’s a career special agent with the Secret Service. So I found out one of particular interest and that, you know, as the name would imply, it talks about what it’s like to be a Secret Service agent.
What are the things that they do? What’s their training like? What does it take to become one and all those kinds of things. These videos were designed to show the inner workings of these different kinds of groups, these organizations, to show what life as a member of one of them was like on any given day.
And I was reminded of those looking at this passage. Because what this passage, just these three verses do is they give us something like that. It’s almost like a documentary, like National Geographic showing us inside the ministry of Jesus. There’s no explicit teaching here. There’s no parable in these verses. There’s no heavy doctrinal material, but it does show us what life was like for Jesus, for his followers, and how ministry worked for him. In the previous narratives, In the verses preceding chapter eight, what did we see?
We saw a centurion come to Jesus asking for help because he had a servant who was dear to him and the servant was very sick on the verge of death. And this centurion, who was a Gentile, remember, not a Jew, but Gentile, received mercy from Christ, and Christ healed his servant. Then we saw Jesus minister to this poor woman, this widow from the village of Nain, whose son had died. And Jesus raised that young man to life. And by those incidents in particular, what is Luke showing us? He’s showing us that Jesus cares for all people. Jews, but also Gentiles, those who are disadvantaged. He turns no one away. In other words, all who come to him, he will receive. And so in these verses, we get an inside look, following those narratives, those that teach us of Christ, who receives sinners, who receives everyone.
Here we get an inside look at his ministry, and we receive instruction. about his ministry. What this passage teaches us is that here in Holy Scripture, we have a snapshot of Christ’s ministry and a blueprint for ours. A snapshot of Christ’s ministry and a blueprint for ours. And here are the three points we’ll consider this passage under today. First of all, good news to all. Secondly, training up laborers. And then finally, support for the work. I’ll say those again. Good news to all, training up laborers, and support for the work.
So, the first thing we see is Jesus preaching. That’s what it says He was doing. Jesus Christ came to preach and to proclaim good news. That’s what the word gospel means, good news. And that’s what Jesus preached. The ESV there in verse one of chapter eight uses the word proclaiming. And that word proclaiming comes from the Greek word that simply means to preach, usually when it occurs in the New Testament. That’s how it’s translated, preach. And that was Jesus’ vocation. That’s what he came to do. He said so himself. He came to proclaim good news.
And then the phrase translated, proclaiming, bringing the good news, that comes from that word, as you probably would have guessed, it comes from that word from which we get the word evangelism. So in both cases, you have proclamation going out from Jesus, he was preaching, and what was he preaching?
Good news to the people. And that’s a reminder to us that the fundamental Christian message, or fundamental to the Christian message, is good news, gospel. The fact that we who are dead in sins and trespasses can be made alive by the grace of God. The fact that we who are under condemnation, if we come to Christ, then there’s no more condemnation for us. That’s wonderful news. That’s the greatest of news. And that’s what the Christian message is all about. So Jesus came preaching that, and he preached the gospel, as we see here, indiscriminately.
You notice what it says, or where it says he preached. He went on through the cities and villages. So he’s preaching in their cities. These large population areas, these places that are busy and bustling with activity, these places which, because of their population levels, we might be tempted to think of as more important. He preached there. But he also preached in villages, rural areas. Those places that are off the beaten path, that aren’t so busy, don’t seem so important. He preached there.
Just as even in modern times, we might have cities, and then around them, suburbs, or villages. That was true in the ancient times as well. You had these larger cities, oftentimes they were fortified. But then surrounding them, there would be smaller clusters of population areas, villages. And Jesus preached not only in the cities, but in the villages as well. To the plain country people, as Matthew Henry put it.
That’s what he did from the start. When we see in Luke’s gospel, and really all the other gospel writers, as they give an account of his itinerant ministry, they said he preached in their cities, he preached in their towns. That’s what he did from the beginning. And that’s what we see him continuing to do here in chapter eight already.
And it’s significant then that what’s going to what’s going to happen right after this in Luke’s gospel is that parable of the sower, because that’s part of the point of the parable of the sower, that the seed of the gospel is being sown indiscriminately. You have a picture of the sower sowing the seed, and he’s casting it. And if you know the parable pretty well already, it’s not as if the sower saw thorny ground, and he threw some seed there anyway, or he saw stony ground and threw seed there. The point is that he’s sowing the seed everywhere. And then later on, certain soil reveals itself to be thorny soil or rocky soil. But that’s what Jesus did. He preached everywhere. He preached to everyone.
And that theme of good news to all is illustrated furthermore, in this sampling of named women that we see in verses two and three. We’re told that the 12 were with Jesus, but verse two says, there were also some women with him who followed him who were his disciples. And we’re given the names of several of them and a little bit of description of a couple. First, we have Mary Magdalene.
And it says that she had been demon possessed. And when anyone in those days was possessed by even one demon, let alone seven, they were in a very helpless and pitiable condition. They were desperate. And as far as we can tell, although there were other exorcists in Jesus’ day, the only one who really had any significant power to cast out demons, to help someone who was being oppressed by a demon was Jesus. And Jesus helped this woman, Mary Magdalene, It’s worth just taking a moment to observe, too, that Luke makes reference to women who were healed of evil spirits and women who were healed of infirmities.
And he makes a distinction there. because modern skeptical minds might just say, Oh, demon possession, that wasn’t really anything. It’s just the way they explained unexplainable afflictions. You know, these, these ancient people that didn’t have the benefits or the knowledge of modern medicine. You know, when there was some affliction, some sickness that they couldn’t explain or had no cure for, they just attribute it to demon possession.
But Don’t forget that our writer, our human author, Luke, was a physician, he was a medical doctor. And he had at his disposal, the medical knowledge of the day. And he could make a distinction between a mere physical ailment between some sort of pathology, and the presence of an evil spirit afflicting someone. And so in those days, both were seen biological infirmities, but also demon possession. And Mary Magdalene had suffered from seven demons and they had gone out from her. Of course, the obvious implication is that it was Jesus who cast them out.
Then you have Joanna. And we could say of Joanna that she was a member of high society. She came from the elite of society, the privileged class, we might say, because she was married to someone by the name of Chusa. Chusa happened to be the steward of Herod. So he had a high position in the court or in the household of the Tetrarch, the ruler, the king, the local king, Herod, whom we know. Chusa served Herod.
Joanna was his wife. Now, We don’t know, and Scripture doesn’t explain how is it the wife of Chuza could be off following Jesus. Maybe she was a widow. Maybe Chuza had died. She was formerly married to Chuza, and he had been household manager for Herod. Or it could very well be that Chuza was a man of faith and was supportive of his wife as she followed Jesus.
But that’s what we know about Susanna, excuse me, Joanna. And as the wife of Chusa, she was probably rather wealthy. Something to keep in mind as we continue on through the passage. Then finally, there’s Susanna. The text doesn’t say anything else about her. Nor do we hear anything else about her anywhere else in the scriptures. But we can surmise that she was known to the church because as Luke wrote his gospel for the church, he probably mentioned her by name because people knew who she was.
But here you have these women following Jesus. So Jesus proclaimed good news to men and to women. his gospel message goes out to all. And the mission of the church, then, is to do what Jesus did. The mission of the church is to do what Jesus did, which is to proclaim the good news of the gospel to the whole world. Good news to all. But then what we see happening, In the second place is the training up of laborers. Very relevant to the church today.
Jesus, it was very normal when Jesus went about preaching and teaching for a large crowd to follow him. Remember, there was a large crowd with him as he went in and approached the village of Nain. We read in various places in the Gospels that sometimes the people were thronging to Jesus in such great numbers that he couldn’t even enter a city. He had to go out of the wilderness and the people came to him. So it was not unusual for Jesus to have a large crowd following him.
But this passage specifically states that the 12 were with him. We know he had many followers, he had many, many disciples. But this passage speaks of the 12. We met them back in Luke chapter six, we know their names, their names are given for us there.
And these 12 persisted in following Jesus. It could be that among the throngs, among the crowds, people were coming and going. It’s perfectly natural to assume that. Whether it’s due to deciding that he didn’t want to follow Jesus any longer, or simply because of normal responsibilities that they had, had to return to their homes or return to their callings. But these 12 stayed. These 12 persisted in following Jesus.
That’s why he appointed them. When the Scriptures say he chose 12, he chose them so that they could be with him, and so that he could send them out to preach. Keep that in mind. He appointed them to be with him. They had been called to a particular ministry, to a particular office. He named them apostles.
And here they are in Luke chapter eight, learning from Christ’s own example. He was going about, he was preaching, he was bringing good news. And they were listening so that they could take in his message so that they could observe and later imitate his method. because soon he was going to send them out to do what he was doing. So he’s training up laborers, but it wasn’t just the 12. Again, let’s go back to verse two. There were these women following him.
And the fact that Jesus would teach women brings up an important point. Christian theology elevates women. That’s important for us to note. Many people have criticized Christianity, Christian theology, Christian doctrine, the church throughout history for suppressing women, for dishonoring them. But there is no religion, there is no institution on earth that has done more to elevate the status of women than the Christian faith and the Christian church. That honors women is not that the Christian faith confers dignity upon them, it simply affirms the dignity which they have because of God, because God made them with equal dignity with man. And the Christian faith proclaims that. The Christian faith teaches that, affirms it.
And it’s remarkable, the amount of commentary on this very thing that that the scholars and the authors make. Thomas Schreiner, writing the ESV expository commentary, said this, sometimes people think the Christian faith has devalued women, but no other faith has more emphasized the personhood, dignity, and importance of women than the Christian faith. William Hendrickson said, it is important to note that while Socrates, Aristotle, Demosthenes, the rabbis, and the men of the Qumran community held women in low esteem, Jesus, in harmony with the teaching of the Old Testament, assigns a place of high honor to them. And then Stein, in his commentary, said, in a day when some argue that biblical teaching demeans women, note that women are treated in a most positive manner in Luke, and also, by the way, in Acts. Luke, among the gospel writers, even gave particular attention to women, more so than the others. But I say again, Christian theology elevates women.
And these women also, along with men, were following Jesus. They were disciples of the Lord Jesus. In contrast, even, for example, to the rabbis of Jesus’ own day, most rabbis refused even to teach women, but not Jesus. And the 12, and these women, three that are named, but many others. They saw how Jesus ministered. They saw how Jesus preached. They saw and heard what Jesus taught. And they learned from his example.
And later on, Jesus is going to send out the 12. Then one of the neat things that Luke shares with us that the other writers don’t is later he sends 72 more. So he had preachers going out in large numbers, even during his own earthly ministry. And then especially after his ascension, the Twelve and these women who are named, again, most of them, Later in the Gospel and in the Book of Acts, after Christ’s ascension, as the church would grow and spread, they had Christ’s example to follow.
They could follow His method. They had His teaching to convey and preached His message. So not only was Jesus preaching and teaching and bringing good news, He was also training others to do the same. That’s also part of the church’s basic responsibility, which is why Paul, writing to Timothy in 2 Timothy 2-2, told Timothy, what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. So the church in its broader mission to proclaim Christ to the nations has this supplemental mission to identify and to train and to raise up and to send out ministers. That’s exactly what’s happening here. Jesus is training his disciples, training up laborers. Well, then finally, what we see in particular reference to these women is support for the work.
Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and others. Many others, it says, provided out of their own means for the proclamation of the gospel. And notice, your ESV Bible correctly translates the pronoun there, it says, these women provided for them Not him, as if to say they provided for Jesus and the rest of the disciples are on their own. These women provided for Jesus, they provided for the 12 as well. Keep in mind, once again, probably some of these women were wealthy, but those who were well off and women of means, and even those who perhaps were not, they were stewarding whatever means they had for the kingdom. They’re stewarding those means for the advancement of Christ’s gospel.
And one of the amazing things that we see here then is Jesus, our Lord Jesus himself, depended upon the material support of other people. Not as if he had to, but he did. He depended on the material support of others. And in doing so, he established a pattern for the New Testament church. That’s the way the church is supposed to work. It’s supposed to support those who preach the gospel. Sounds very self-serving, I know. But we come to this point in the passage. This is an important lesson for us to learn and to understand.
And not only was Jesus establishing a pattern for his church, he was also demonstrating his humility. Think about it. Here, veiled in flesh, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the very creator of the universe, the maker of heaven and earth, the maker of all things, invisible and visible, dwelling in the flesh on earth, and he’s relying on his own creatures to support him.
He fed 5000 people with five loaves and two fish. So if he wanted to, he could just create food for his disciples to eat and for himself to eat if he wanted to do it that way. But he didn’t. He chose to use means the the feeding of the 5000 had a had a important message for us, but it wasn’t Jesus norm. Normally, they had a The disciples, the 12, had a treasurer who kept the money bag, and that money bag was filled by people who supported Jesus. He chose to use means, in other words. He humbled himself.
He set an example for ministers. He set an example for missionaries. that they were to be supported by the church. Now, someone might rightly make an objection or declare an exception and say, hey, wait a minute, what about Paul? Paul, we get the expression tent maker from Paul, because that’s what his trade was.
And as he went about proclaiming the gospel and planting churches all over Asia Minor, all over the inhabited world of the known civilized Roman world, everywhere he went, he would work during the day to get his own living, and then he’d preach when he wasn’t working. That’s how he operated. And someone might say, well, he got his living doing work while he was ministering, and nobody could say that Paul was a slacker.
What about him? Well, the answer to that question, and it’s a fair question, because it’s very clear, Paul did not accept support from the people to whom he ministered. He didn’t want to. But Paul was a unique case, and he even said so himself. He gave the reasons. He had his own reasons for not accepting support from those to whom he ministered.
But remember, it was Paul himself who wrote 1 Corinthians, and he wrote chapter 9. And he makes this observation in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 11. He says, if we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? In other words, if I’m going to invest my time and energy and effort, my sweat and my tears in proclaiming the gospel to you and teaching you and making disciples of you, isn’t it reasonable that you could give me a little bit of return for my physical needs? He’s making that argument. But at the same time, Paul himself didn’t accept that support. He goes on to make reference to those who minister in the temple. And that’s why we had the Old Testament reading that we did.
Remember how it said that when a person brings an offering to the Lord, a portion of that offering was given to who? It was given to the priest. And there were actually a number of passages from Leviticus and elsewhere in the Pentateuch that we could have gone and gotten a similar principle. Other areas in the books of Moses indicate that Levites as well, when they were on duty serving in the tabernacle or in the temple, they would also receive their sustenance from the offerings of the people.
That’s how it worked. Because just as in the Old Testament, And in the new, equally so, the people would bring their offerings, they were food offerings, but God doesn’t eat them. God doesn’t need them to be sustained. They would offer them, and then a portion of that would go to the servants in the temple. And it’s the same thing when you give your tithes and offerings every Lord’s Day morning. Do you think God needs your money? He doesn’t. But we give out of love. We give out of thanksgiving. We give in obedience to Him.
And part of what you give supports the person who ministers the word to you. Part of what you give supports those people we pray for week after week, who are serving Him in other places. It supports people who are trying to plant new churches. It supports people who are ministering on the missionary field. God doesn’t need the money. The cattle on a thousand hills are His. Everything we have belongs to Him.
So Paul wrote a little later in 1 Corinthians 9, do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living from the gospel.
And as that chapter goes on, Paul explains the reason he doesn’t accept that kind of support. But he says, generally speaking, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. So the New Testament gospel norm is that the community of faith supports and provides for those who minister in spiritual things.
Paul references the Old Testament priests and the Levites as examples and patterns for today. And if you remember, in verse 14 of 1 Corinthians 9, as I read it, he says, the Lord commanded this. Sometimes, and for some reasons, there may be exceptions, but the scripture standard is that the church supports the work.
That’s what we see happening in Luke 8, verses 2 and 3. And that’s what we see happening here and in churches of Jesus Christ all over the world. So this has been a little bit of a snapshot for us into Christ’s ministry, what the inner workings in a sense, what kept it going, how were Jesus and his disciples provided for. So now we’ve seen inside, we’ve seen inside the ministry of Jesus. And in it, we also have a blueprint for the ongoing ministry of his church today.
What we have seen Jesus do, We must go and do likewise. And what did Jesus do? He proclaimed the good news to all. What do we do then? We make disciples of all the nations. We proclaim the good news to the rich and to the poor, to the young and to the old, to the high and to the low, people from every tribe and tongue and people. Good news to all.
And then as we go, as we make disciples, we’re to identify, train, equip, and send out laborers into the harvest. The harvest is plentiful. The laborers are few. I would remind you that approximately 10% of the pulpits in the OPC today are vacant. We need laborers. We need to identify new laborers. Get them trained, equip them, and then send them out to minister in Christ’s name.
So, pray. Pray for that. The tone of that request that Jesus or that instruction that Jesus gives his disciples, it’s as if he’s saying, beg, beg the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers into his harvest. And for you men in particular, pray, ask the Lord. If you’re a Christian man, you owe it to yourself, you owe it to God to do this at least once, ask the Lord, are you calling me into ministry? The answer may be no. The answer may be not yet, but the answer might be yes. Pray now and ask the Lord if he would have you go.
And as we proclaim the good news to all, as we train up laborers, as we provide for the support of the work, we can be confident that Christ Jesus will build his church. He says that he will. Believe that he’ll do it. and He’ll bless the means that He directs us to use. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it.
Let’s pray. Oh, our Father in heaven, we thank you for your provision for us. We thank you for making the provision of a Savior whose blood is able to wash away sins. Lord, may we proclaim him to all. May we proclaim him to the nations. We pray that you would. We beg of you, O God, send forth laborers into your harvest, fill our vacant pulpits, send messengers to the nations. And may we be faithful to support that work. May we give generously for the cause of the gospel, for the cause of Christ. And we pray that He would receive all the honor and glory. And we pray these things in His name. Amen.