Daily Bible Reading 17th August 2026 // Luke 10:1-16
1 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. 2 And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into his harvest. 3 Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ 6 And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. 7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the labourer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. 9 Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ 12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.
13 “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 sackcloth and ashes. 14 But it will be more bearable in the judgement for Tyre and Sidon than for you. 15 And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades.
16 “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.”
On the subject of the eternal issues involved in the work of the gospel, Dr James Denney's words are solemnly impressive: 'If the gospel, as conceived in the New Testament, has any character at all, it has the character of finality. It is God's last word to men. And the consequences of accepting or rejecting it are final; it opens no prospect beyond the life on the one hand, and the death on the other, which are the results of obedience and disobedience. Obey, and you enter into a light in which there is no darkness at all: disobey, and you pass eventually into a darkness in which there is no light at all. What God says to us in all Scripture, from beginning to end, is not, “Sooner or later?” but, 'Life or death?' These are the alternatives before us; they are absolutely separate; they do not run into one another at any time. It is necessary to speak the more earnestly of this matter, because there is a disposition, on the plea that it is impossible for us to divide men into two classes, to blur or even obliterate the distinction between Christian and non-Christian. Many things prompt us to make the difference merely one of quantity - a more or less of conformity to some ideal standard - in which case, of course, a little more, or a little less, is of no great account. But that only means that we never take the distinction between being right with God and being wrong with God as seriously as God takes it; with Him it is simply infinite. The difference between those who obey and those who do not obey the gospel is not the difference of a little better and a little worse; it is the difference of life and death. If there is any truth in Scripture at all, this is true - that those who stubbornly refuse to submit to the gospel, and to love and obey Jesus Christ, incur at the last Advent an infinite and irreparable loss. They pass into a night on which no morning dawns.'