What Jesus told the seventy-two

The passage this whole class rests on is short. Jesus is sending seventy-two people into towns he is about to visit, and his instructions take about a minute to read.

After this, the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them in pairs ahead of him to every city and place where he himself was about to go. — Luke 10:1 (OTB)

Read the rest of it — Luke 10:1-11 — before you go on. It is worth having the actual words in front of you rather than a summary of them.

Five instructions

Pray. Before going anywhere, ask the Lord of the harvest for workers. This is first, and we will spend a whole chapter on it.

Go. Not invite, not advertise. Go to where people already are.

Speak peace. “Peace be upon this house” is the opening move — a blessing, not a pitch.

Stay where you are received.

Stay in that house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move from house to house. — Luke 10:7 (OTB)

Move on where you are not. No arguing, no camping on a closed door.

The name comes from the passage itself

Jesus gives the person you are looking for a name:

When you enter a house, begin by saying, ‘Peace be upon this house.’ If a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on them; if not, it will return to you. — Luke 10:5-6 (OTB)

Notice what that does. Your peace either rests somewhere or comes back to you, and either outcome is fine. Nothing is lost when it returns. You are not spending something you might run out of.

Now read it for what he does not say

This is the exercise worth doing slowly. Go back through Luke 10:1-11 and underline every instruction that is a restriction.

Do not move from house to house. Do not carry a purse or bag or sandals. Do not greet anyone on the road. Do not go looking for better accommodation.

Nearly half of what Jesus says is subtraction. He is not equipping them with more — he is stripping away everything that would slow them down or spread them thin. Most of our evangelism strategies fail in exactly the direction he closes off: more contacts, more material, more places, less depth in any of them.