Sunday, October 9, 2011

Bible Truth #317 - Luke 10:1-6

1  After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before his face into every city and place, whither he himself would come.
2  Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest.
3  Go your ways: behold, I send you forth as lambs among wolves.
4  Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor shoes: and salute no man by the way.
And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house.
6  And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again.

I included the previous 5 verses for context and have written about verse 2 elsewhere, but in this Bible Truth I would like to point out an amazing thing in verse 6.

Jesus said as they enter a home, first say peace to this house (v5). And if the Son of Peace is there, their peace will rest upon it and if not, their blessing of peace will return to them. In the culture of that day when travelers enter a town, as they go through the city gate, frequently, especially if it later in the day, someone will approach them and offer them shelter. This is shown in Genesis 19 when Lot offered shelter to strangers (the angels).

The point is, God had already determined upon whose homes He would bless with the Son of Peace, His peace was already there. And the fact that Jesus said IF the Son of peace is there simply shows that even good, moral, friendly people who don’t have the Son of Peace will offer their homes or empty rooms as a place of shelter to strangers.

But how did the Son of Peace already exist upon these particular homes? The Son of Peace was already there, it preceded these 70 disciples to specific homes. Did God observe the behavior of the occupants and then grant them the Son of Peace? Of course not. If He did He would be showing favoritism based on works and we know salvation is not of works (Ephesians 2:9) nor is God a respecter of persons (Acts 10:34).

Can this be explained a different way? Probably. The Arminian will make claims based on their man-centered belief of decisional salvation but it will stand in contradiction to many other passages of Scripture that I’ve written of over 410 times.

Bottom line - God chooses whom to grant peace, whom to grant belief, whom to grant faith, whom to grant repentance, and whom to save. And that is His Elect, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world (Ephesians 1:4). Those were the homes that had the Son of Peace before the disciples arrived.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.