The Apostles were to salute no man by the way; they were not to join in any trivial wayside talk. This served to impress upon them the solemn nature of their work; all their thoughts were to be centred in that, it was to supply the master purpose of their lives. They had God's work to do and God's message to give, and there should be no room in their hearts for any thing but this. This severed them for the time from the rest of the world. They were to go, side by side, with their staves in their hands, not looking this way or that, but having the fixed gaze and steadfast [pg 299] air of men who are marching determinedly to their goal.
When they come to the city where they will stay they are not to plead for hospitality; they have not come of themselves or for themselves—they are God's messengers; they are to go to the house which they think fittest, and, if denied, they are to shake off the dust from their feet and go elsewhere, and, when admitted, there they are to abide as of right. There is to be no shifting of quarters; disturbance and unsettlement is studiously avoided, as in all other proceedings of our Lord. Many among the householders of a village might strive to have a share in entertaining the prophets of God; and the passing of these from house to house would bring into play little worldly jealousies and call off the attention of the missionary from his single object. Where they are admitted, they are told, “there abide and thence depart.”
The Apostles are given minute directions as to outfit and demeanour but very little as to what they were to say. They were not to be mere mouthpieces, they were teachers as well, and were left to teach in their own way. To use responsibility was the highest part of the lesson they had to learn, and if they had been tied down too precisely this responsibility would have been lost. We have no record of their preaching on this journey—they are sent to proclaim one truth and one only “That the Kingdom of God was come.” [pg 300] This truth they might enforce in any way they chose—they might preach to many or few, in houses or synagogues or on the mountain side—and if any disbelieved that God's Kingdom was come, they were to assure their hearers that it was none the less about them on every side, because they did not choose to believe it was there.[207] On their return, they relate what they had taught.[208]
There is another point. They are not directed even to name our Lord; He would not suffer them to proclaim Jesus of Nazareth, for He had not “come in his own name.”[209] This law is most steadily observed; the seventy say on their return, that the devils were subject to them through our Lord's name, but though they may have used His name when they wrought cures, they do not seem to have declared that the expected Messiah had come; they kept to what they were told to do. The wonder is that no one on this mission should have announced Jesus as the Messiah: they could not have been warned against doing so, because to warn them specially would have been to suggest the notion of that which was to be avoided. A similar circumstance may have been one cause of the fervent thanks which our Lord renders to His Father on the return of the seventy.[210]
How long this journey of the Apostles lasted we do not know; the exigencies of harmonists have [pg 301] led some of them to reduce it to a day or two, but I should suppose it to have occupied at least a week. Neither do we know in what districts the journeys took place; but that the Twelve started from the neighbourhood of Nazareth in the spring of a.d. 29, and the seventy from the Northern border of Judæa or from Peræa in the following autumn, is a plausible guess. The words, “Go not into the way of the Gentiles,” &c. which St Matthew puts at the head of our Lord's directions, I think refer to the mission of the seventy. In Peræa they were close to Gentile countries and Samaria lay in the way to parts of Galilee and Judæa. They are told not to abide in any Samaritan city or set foot at all in a Gentile land; our Lord is first sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. All went well on both occasions. On the return of the seventy our Lord saw in this success of His disciples in their ministration, an augury of the establishment of His Church. Men, it was plain, could be trusted for the great work in view; and in this success of the disciples in setting it afoot our Lord seemed to behold the Power of Evil falling from the sky. Our Lord pours out His soul on this occasion in thankfulness to His Father.
“In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, [pg 302] Father; for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth who the Son is, save the Father; and who the Father is, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.”[211]
This thankfulness of our Lord assures us of one point; these seventy must have been exposed to the possibility of failure. Our Lord's joy is that of one delivered from a great anxiety. This instance bears out the view that our Lord's knowledge of the immediate future was, partly at least, in abeyance during His stay on earth. Indeed, if He had been free from all feeling of uncertainty, His life could not have been truly human. The course of daily events depending on the will of others did not in general lie spread out to His view.
Another illustration of this occurs on the return of the Twelve; our Lord goes to the desert seeking quiet, but in this He is disappointed, for He finds Himself attended by five thousand people.
St Mark tells us
“And the apostles gather themselves together unto Jesus; and they told him all things, whatsoever they had done, and whatsoever they had taught. And he saith unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while. For there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desert place apart.”[212]