Daily Bible Reading 19th 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.”
Furthermore - still on the metaphor of the lambs among wolves - the lamb is above all a sacrificial animal. 'Christ suffered, leaving us an example, that ye should follow in His steps' (1 Peter 2:21). To go forth as 'lambs' is to go forth to sacrifice - living sacrifices, and this is what makes the witness prevail. 'I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus', cried Paul, and souls were born into the kingdom of God all over the ancient world. It is this sacrificial note that is the real point in the many references in Scripture to our Lord's redeeming work, and it is to miss the mark to suppose that the 'lamb metaphor' speaks of the gentleness and meekness of Christ. For example, the reference in Isaiah 53:7 to His silence in being brought as a lamb to the slaughter does not so much speak of His gentle and submissive spirit in face of suffering as of the fact that, in standing as a sacrificial victim He was bearing our sins away. As Paul puts it in Romans 3:19, to be guilty before God means that every mouth is stopped; and Jesus took upon Himself that guilt, for us; and, condemned in our place, there was nothing He could say. His mouth was stopped, as our Substitute and Sin-bearer. That is why He was 'as a sheep before her shearers... dumb' - not because He was 'lamb-like', but because He was a sacrificial Victim.