Daily Bible Reading 18th 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.”
We should not miss the significance of Jesus' words in 3, 'lambs among wolves'. The implications of these words are considerable. The metaphor of sheep is a common one in Scripture and is used in a variety of ways: teaching us about the nature of sin, about the nature of man, about the relation of believers to the Saviour, and so on. Common to all these usages, there is the thought of weakness or frailty. And when Jesus speaks of sending out His disciples as lambs, He means us surely to think in terms of what Paul expresses so graphically when he says that 'God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the mighty' and that 'the weakness of God is stronger than men'. Why is this principle so firmly imbedded in the gospel? Well, human weakness is the 'door' through which God can come to bless the world He longs to save. The metaphor also tells us that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but spiritual. The servants of Christ do not resort to fleshly means and expedients in order to fulfil His will but to weapons that the world counts as impotent and irrelevant. Furthermore, the metaphor indicates, as Calvin points out, that the disciples have no means of defence. They are vulnerable. This is where a great part of the cost of discipleship comes in; for to go forth as channels of the love and compassion of Christ is to open oneself to the possibility of being hurt. We cannot do Christ's work in the world without exposing ourselves thus.