Traveling Light

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My wife and I laugh from time to time about how she and I will pack for trips differently. Some of you may have experienced that in your lives as well. For example, when we left the church after our wedding, we went back to her house to pick up her luggage, and she sent me back to get a suitcase that was bigger than I am.

And I called it the beast. Do you still have that? I have not seen that, and I’ve been glad for that. I looked at it, and it was heavier than I was, too.

And I said, we’re taking I-40, not the Oregon Trail. I don’t know what’s. .

. You’re packed like we’re homesteading, and it’s only gotten worse now that we have all these children, because we go. .

. I mean, even if we go for an overnight stay at the grandparents’ You know, we’re packing noise machines and fans and chairs and beds. And when we went for Christmas, we took a trailer.

I’m not kidding. Between the presents and the stuff we had to bring back. And men just don’t travel that way, usually.

I mean, if it’s tools or fishing tackle or hunting equipment, we might. But the last substantial trip I took was that awful trip to Nashville that y’all have already heard so much about. But when I was packing for that trip, I took the clothes I was wearing, I had my briefcase, I had a bag from Cabela’s that’s meant to, it’s a cloth bag that it’s meant to carry fishing tackle, and I had some toiletries and a few essentials in there, and that’s what I took.

That’s what I got on the plane with. And I remember the conversation with my wife. She said, that’s all you’re taking?

Yeah. She said, you’re not even taking pajamas. I said, I don’t need pajamas.

She said, what are you going to sleep in? Now, remember, I was only planning on being on the ground in Nashville for about 18 hours. What are you going to sleep in?

I’m not going to sleep. What do you mean you’re not going to sleep? I said, I didn’t get a hotel room or anything.

Now, when I ended up getting sick, thankfully, Rick said, Rick had already offered beforehand, if I needed to stay in his hotel room, I could. But I was not planning on getting a hotel room or even going to bed because I had to be back, I had to fly out back to Lawton at 5 a. m.

, had to be at the airport at 3. She said, well, what are you going to do all night in Nashville? Because my wife knows me, I do not like the night life.

I do not like to boogie, whatever that song was. No. She said, what are you going to do overnight in Nashville?

I said, they have Waffle House there. She said, what are you going to do all night at Waffle House? I said, waffles.

She said, you’re going to eat waffles for eight hours? I said, if I need to, you know, I don’t understand the problem here. I have my medicine, I have my toothbrush, and I have waffles.

What else do I need? You know, we just, we travel differently. a lot of times we will use our preparation for a big trip as an excuse not to do it or to delay it because we’ll say well I can’t do it because I’ve got to work out all these things and it might it might even sound like reasonable things but we’ll use it as an opportunity to put stuff off we’re going to look at these two methods and I’m not saying by the way that one is more spiritual than the other.

Okay. There’s a lot of wisdom in the way my wife packs because it’s a lot fewer trips to Walmart than the way I pack. Right.

But we could look at the disciples and their preparation for what Jesus was calling them to do as a choice between these two ways of traveling. And Jesus said for their purposes, for his purposes, he told them to pick one of these ways over the other because one of these ways was a way for them to to put off going and being obedient so packing packing up like you’re uh like you’re the joads heading to california is what jesus told the disciples not to do and we’re going to get into that tonight uh jesus basically told them to be ready at a moment’s notice you know many of you have heard the story of the the minute men at lexington and concord it was 1700 years after this that they had they were called the minute men when the news came that the British were coming, they had to be ready at a moment’s notice. I should have gotten a clip and just let Andy Griffith tell you all this story.

He could do it better than I could. But they were sort of like that. They needed to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

And that’s what Jesus tells them to do in Mark chapter 6. If you turn there with me in Mark chapter 6, we’re going to start in verse 7 tonight and go through verse 13. And by the way, there’s at that door and that door, there are also the outlines for you where you can compare them with the text in Matthew and Luke, if memory serves.

And if you would stand with me, if you’re not already, if you’re able to do so without too much difficulty as we read from God’s word together. Mark chapter six, starting in verse seven, it says, and he called the 12 to himself and began to send them out two by two and gave them power over unclean spirits. He commanded them to take nothing for the journey except a staff, no bag, no bread, no copper in their money belts, but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics.

And he said to them, in whatever place you enter a house and stay there until you depart from that place, excuse me, in whatever place you enter a house, stay there until you depart from that place. And whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city.

So they went out and preached that people should repent and they cast out many demons and anointed them with oil, many who were sick and healed them. And you may be seated. So what we see in this, in this brief passage tonight is that Jesus sent the disciples out to preach at this point in his ministry.

And at this point in their training, they are being sent out really for the first time, kind of on their own two by two, but they’re not all able to go with Jesus. So they’re being sent out really without his direct supervision for the first time to go and proclaim the message that he has given them. It says in verse 1, he called the twelve to himself, began to send them out two by two, and gave them power over unclean spirits.

Now, when you look at some of the other passages that are parallel to this in Mark, and I’m sorry, we’re in Mark, in Matthew and Luke, it gives some additional context to what they were doing. In particular, I hope the outline is not too confusing for you. Matthew was so very long and detailed compared to the others.

When you read these stories from the Gospels that are covered in multiples, sometimes you see that one of the writers writes two verses and the other one writes a whole essay on it because they each get excited about different things. And you can see how God used these different people and their personalities to make And so we have some extra context given from details in Matthew and even later things here in the book of Mark. In Matthew chapter 10, verses 7 and 8, it says, As you go, preach, saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Now, just a few verses after that in Matthew, it says, you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles.

And then later on in this passage that we just read in Mark, it says in verses 12 and 13, so they went out and preached that people should repent and they cast out many demons and anointed with oil many who were sick and healed them. So we see that they’re being sent out to preach. They’re being sent out specifically to preach that the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

And why is the kingdom of heaven at hand? Because Jesus is there in their midst. The Messiah that they’ve been waiting for has arrived, but it’s not a Messiah. He’s not a Messiah who was going to restore an earthly kingdom to Israel like they were looking for.

It’s not an earthly kingdom being at hand. It is the kingdom of heaven. It is the Messiah that God promised all this time that they missed the clues about.

So they’re being sent to preach about Jesus, which he says also in that second passage in Matthew that you’ll be brought before these governors and kings for my sake. And he said, you’ll be a testimony before them and the Gentiles. So as they were going to preach, they were going to be testifying about Jesus.

He said, you’re going to be called up to give an answer for my sake. When they bring you up and they say, what do you have to say for yourself? You’re really there to give an answer for what you have to say about myself, about Jesus.

And then Mark even says they went out and preached that people should repent. They weren’t going out and giving the information so people could say, oh, cool information. They were supposed to do something about it.

They were supposed to respond in some way. The Messiah has shown up. Now, what are you going to do about it?

And they were preaching that people should repent. So they had gone out to preach the gospel as much as they understood it at the time. It wasn’t the full gospel.

And I know there are groups that call themselves full gospel. I don’t know what they mean by that term. I’m not using it in that way.

When I say the full gospel, I mean the idea that I talked about this morning, the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and God’s offer of salvation through that. They didn’t have all that information yet. They understood, I believe they had a head knowledge, that Jesus Christ was the Messiah.

I think they understood on some level that salvation and forgiveness were going to be found in Him. But as far as them understanding yet, the cross, the blood, the resurrection, they didn’t even understand that until after the resurrection. I mean, even once the cross happened, they didn’t understand it.

So we know they didn’t understand everything about the gospel. They didn’t even understand all of the essentials about the gospel. But what little they knew, they went and they were preaching that.

Basically, that the Messiah, the Son of God, has arrived, and people should repent and seek salvation through him. They didn’t understand the sacrifice, but they called men to repent and find salvation in Jesus. So at the very least, they were preaching Jesus.

I said earlier they were preaching the gospel. At the very least, they were preaching Jesus and laying the groundwork for people to understand the gospel. And that was the purpose for the trip.

As Jesus sent them out, it wasn’t just to educate people. It was to preach so that people would be brought to understand at least what they understood about the gospel at that point. And Jesus empowered them for this mission.

It says in verse 7 that he gave them power over unclean spirits. And we see that recorded in Matthew and Luke as well, that he gave them incredible power and authority as he sent them out. He didn’t just send them out to do this on their own.

So Jesus sent the disciples to preach. And we see also here that he sent the disciples with minimal preparation. He sent them with minimal preparation.

Now, as I was putting that in my notes, I thought we need to be clear about one thing. When I say minimal preparation, that means they’re practical preparation. That doesn’t mean for them to go out without a clue what they were talking about and try to preach Jesus.

That may be one of the worst things that we can do, is to go out with minimal preparation as far as understanding the gospel. This wasn’t about a lack of theological preparation, because what had they been doing up to this point, following Jesus around? They’re not just following him around because they’re lost puppy dogs.

This was the way this worked in their society. If you wanted to learn from a rabbi, you dropped everything and went and lived with that rabbi and walked with that rabbi and did what he did and you spent time with him. So for them to follow Jesus around, this was their version of seminary.

They were getting a theological education. They got to the stuff that we write about in seminary, about trying to understand who God is. They got to see it up close and personal. I mean, they had the greatest theological education and preparation of anybody.

They got to see this stuff up close and personal. They got to see Jesus for who He is. They got to see Him in the flesh. And the things that they were supposed to preach and teach, they got those straight from Jesus Himself.

So as far as understanding what they were supposed to go and proclaim, they were as prepared as anybody. And so you and I, if our calling is to make the gospel known, this doesn’t let us off the hook for preparing for it. Let us off the hook about preparing for that.

It makes a difference when your prepositions get out of order. It doesn’t let us off the hook about preparing for that. We do need to have some preparation.

Now, don’t let that frighten you to the point where you can’t open your mouth and share the gospel with somebody until you know all the answers. Because I can tell you, it’s never going to happen. It’s just not.

You’ve been to seminary. Do you have all the answers? I’m in seminary.

Don’t have all the answers. As a matter of fact, the more I learn, the more I realize how many things I don’t understand. I was a lot smarter before I went to college.

Funny how that works. Actually, I think it’s that way for a lot of people. But anyway, I digress.

We don’t want to be so. . .

We don’t want to be paralyzed by what we don’t know to the point that we think we can’t share the gospel until we’re prepared to give an answer to every conceivable question and just have that silver bullet in our magazine that’s going to answer everybody’s questions and is going to convince everybody because it’s just not going to happen. But at the same time, we do need to be growing in God’s Word. We do need to be studying and trying to understand the things that we’re supposed to tell people.

So if you’ve trusted Christ as your Savior, you know enough to be able to tell somebody how to trust Christ as their Savior. There’s always time, as long as you have time on this earth, there’s always time to understand that better and get better at presenting it. What he’s talking about here is going out with minimal practical preparation.

It says in verses 8 and 9 here, He commanded them to take nothing on the journey except a staff, no bag, no bread, no copper in their money belts, but to wear sandals and not put on two tunics. Basically, the point of all of this, of this verse, of the parallel verses that we see in the other Gospels, the point of all of this is that they were not supposed to take a lot of extra things with them. They were supposed to travel light.

Don’t worry about planning for every possible contingency. Just go, is Jesus’ attitude to them. Just take your stuff, take your staff, take your shoes on your feet, take the clothes on your back, and just go.

just go now Matthew in Matthew 10 10 tells it records that Jesus said not to take sandals or a staff but when we look at what Mark says here it looks like the meaning is not to take a second because Luke also says in Luke 9 3 not to take staffs plural but the pluralization points to the same thing he’s talking about don’t take extras because Mark tells him to take a staff and I’m pointing that out to you because this is not a contradiction. Mark is recording that Jesus said, take a staff. Matthew and Luke are recording that Jesus said, don’t take staffs with you.

Well, he’s not prohibiting them from taking a staff. He’s not saying you cannot take a staff or you’re being disobedient if you take a staff. If they had a staff in their hand, fine, go take it.

But if their attitude was going to be, well, I need to pack an extra staff and I need to get this, I need to get this. I need to have all these ducks in a row. Then Jesus was saying, don’t worry about taking all this extra stuff.

Just take what you’ve got and go. If you’ve got a staff, take it. If you don’t, don’t take it.

Don’t go get extras. Just go. All right, if there’s a theme to this message, it’s just go.

If there’s a theme to what Jesus said, it’s just go. And there were other instances with some of these things, with the shoes and the coats, the tunics, where people might look at it and say on the surface, that looks like a contradiction. See, the Bible can’t be true.

Read it in context. Understand what he’s telling them. It’s not that one Jesus is saying, thou shalt not have staffs, and the other Jesus is saying, thou must have a staff.

Again, he’s saying, don’t worry about what you’re taking with you. And in cases where he says, don’t take this, He’s saying, don’t pack a bunch of extra stuff. Just go.

So I think it’s entirely possible that Jesus said, take a staff. Don’t worry about taking a bunch of staffs. Have you ever repeated yourself in giving instructions?

I might tell Benjamin, dealing with a book for school or something, read a chapter of your book, and then he’s going to ask me a bunch of details, and he needs to know how all of this fits together. He needs to know all the details. He’s too much like me in that regard.

He wants to know all the. . .

He gets bogged down in the details. And so I might tell him five minutes later, don’t read a bunch of chapters in your book. You don’t need all these chapters.

Have I contradicted myself? You see the point I’m trying to make? You see the point Jesus is trying to make?

Okay, I feel like I may be beating this dead horse a little too much, but I want you to understand it’s not a contradiction. He’s saying don’t take extras. So his point here is don’t bother packing.

Don’t spend a bunch of time thinking, how am I going to do this? What do I need? and getting yourself paralyzed where you can’t leave for days and weeks until you have everything in a row.

When he calls, just take what you have and go. Just go. And he said to them in verse 10, in whatever place you enter house, stay there until you depart from that place.

People might look at this the same way because I think one of the other, off the top of my head, I think one of the other gospels says, and don’t depart from that place. And here he’s saying, stay there until you depart. Yeah, when he says don’t depart from that place, he’s talking about don’t jump around from house to house.

Don’t start out at somebody’s house and then you meet somebody else and say, well, they’ve got a pool, so I’m going there. I’m going to stay there. He said, just pick a place and stay there.

Stay there, stay in that house, stay with that person until you depart from the town. So when he says depart, he means don’t go to the place with the built-in pool or the better food. Just stay put in one place until you move on to the next village.

But his point there was don’t worry about where you’re going to stay. Now, how many of us would like to travel that way? I remember back in the days before they had online reservations for things.

My parents, we would go on trips. We’d head to Florida. We’d head to Chicago.

We’d head wherever. And Dad would just drive until it started getting dark, and we’d pull over and find a hotel room. And I remember more than once having to drive a few places in town because we couldn’t find a place that, one, had a vacancy, and two, we could afford.

well we don’t do that now we we may book our hotels online and advance you know months out that would stress my wife out to say we’re just going to drive somewhere and find a hotel you know what honestly it would stress me out now tell me there’s waffle houses in town I can live with that but tell me you’re going to drive there and then find a hotel that’s a different story but jesus said don’t worry about where you’re going to stay don’t let that paralyze you that that need for preparation. Just go and trust that I’m going to provide you with somebody who’s not only willing to give you a hearing, but willing to take you in while you’re spreading the word, spreading the message to others. In other words, understand that God will provide for you as you do his work and just go.

And then we come to verse 11, whoever will not receive you nor hear you, when you depart from there, shake off the dust under your feet as a testimony against them. Assuredly, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for that city. Tells them, don’t worry about how you’re received.

Do you ever not go to a place because you’re worried about what kind of part of town it might be in? Does that make sense the way I asked that? Have you ever thought about going somewhere and then you thought about what part of town it might be in and then you said, maybe I don’t go there.

We’ve had some of those conversations. What’s it going to be like when I get there? How are the locals going to react to me?

Especially in their case, they’re preaching this message that later on proved to be pretty unpopular. But Jesus said, don’t worry about how you’re received. Don’t worry about if they’re going to get mad at you.

Don’t worry about if there are going to be people that aren’t willing to listen to you. He says, where people won’t listen, just trust God to deal with that and move on. As a matter of fact, he says, if they’re not going to listen, depart from there, shake the dust off of your feet as a testimony against them and keep going.

this idea of shaking off the dust I was reading this week and it was something that that they would do when they were leaving the the territory of the gentiles you know because there was this animosity at times between the jews and the gentiles and and some of that stemmed from their understanding of the law and clean and unclean and and it was you know you would leave the gentile area and you don’t want any of their filthy gentile dirt on your shoes and so you just brush the dust off and here you keep your Gentile dirt and your Gentile country and I’m crossing back into Israel. That was one of the things I read about this week in shaking the dust off. So when he says if they won’t hear you, even if they are Israelites, if they won’t hear you, shake the dust off, meaning treat them as non-believers.

Doesn’t mean you treat them badly, but when he says shake the dust off, he means just recognize that they’re not believers. When you got right down to it, that was the conflict between Israel and the Gentiles, was the differences in faith. And they could not very well expect the Gentiles to act like Jews.

And so when he says shake the dust off, just recognize that you can’t expect these people who are not believers to treat you as though they are believers. That’s what the shaking off of the dust is about. You’re declaring them to be non-believers.

You’re just recognizing that this is what non-believers do. And it almost feels passive-aggressive. I don’t think that’s Jesus’ intent here.

He’s just saying recognize them for who they are and move on to the next person who might be willing to hear. Don’t lose sleep over it. Do what you’re supposed to do and trust God to deal with it.

And as a matter of fact, he said, I’m sure they were worried about their reception in these communities. and he says they have more to worry about than you do. You go tell everybody you can, and if they reject the message, they’re going to deal with God about that.

He said it’ll be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for them. Well, why is that? Because Sodom and Gomorrah did terrible things.

Sodom and Gomorrah didn’t have direct evidence of the Messiah in front of them that they rejected. And there’s this principle that runs throughout Scripture that the more we receive from God, the more we’re held accountable for it. And that’s particularly true when it comes to God’s truth.

Now, lost is lost, but in some way it sounds like the judgment is more severe. If you knew the fullness of God’s truth, you heard the gospel in full and rejected it, as opposed to you just knew there was a God out there somewhere and you rejected that amount of truth. But his point to them, if people won’t listen, realize that there are other people out there who will listen and just go.

So all these things that they would have looked at, the preparation, the worry, all the things that would have kept them from going and fulfilling their mission, all the things that would have delayed them, Jesus said, don’t worry about these things. And we see that tactic happen a lot of times. I’ll get to that in just a moment.

This was a teachable moment for Jesus’ followers. He taught them a couple of things here in this passage that we can learn from. He taught his followers, first of all, to trust God.

Because all throughout this, he’s talking about his ability to supply their needs as they go. Now, yes, he’s supplying it through the people that they would listen to, that would listen to them in the villages. But ultimately, God would be providing through those means.

As they went and obeyed God, all they had to do was just go and obey God. And then he was going to take care of where they were going to stay, what they were going to eat, what clothes they were going to wear, whether or not people were going to listen to them. God was going to take care of all that.

Their job was just to worry about going and doing the one thing God told them to do. Just go out and preach and do ministry. Just do that and trust that God’s going to take care of your needs.

So it was a teachable moment for them that they could trust God and they needed to know that because they were going to be sent out later on to do the same thing, only the stakes were going to be much higher. Because after the resurrection, that’s when people were really going to react badly to the message. And so this is sort of the training wheels for them to learn to trust God.

And that’s how God does with us. God will walk with us through a small storm or a small struggle, so we learn to trust Him in that. And the next time we’re able to trust Him in something a little bit bigger, and something a little bit bigger.

In each of these circumstances, we learn something about trusting God and His provision that we’re able to put into practice later on. So these were sort of training wheels for them as they were stepping out to do ministry. Just go and be obedient and trust that God’s going to meet your needs along the way.

So it was for them to learn faith. And I think we could learn from that as well, that if we’ll just be obedient, we can trust God to take care of us. So many times we say no to God or we say wait to God because we think we’ve got to have all these things figured out first. We’ve got to have all the practical stuff figured out.

We’ve got to have all of our ducks in a row before we can say yes to the thing that He’s calling us to do. when God really says, just be obedient and trust me that I can take care of this. But he also taught his followers to make the good news their priority.

And this is where I was starting to head a minute ago. Basically, he was teaching there were no excuses for delaying their obedience. And we see stories like this in the Gospels where, for example, the one that comes to mind is a man who said, I want to follow you, but let me go back and bury my father first. And Jesus said, no, sorry, can’t do it.

You either come now or you don’t come. And on the surface, that sounds so harsh until we understand what was going on here. I’ve heard preachers say, and I think there’s some evidence to back this up, that the reason Jesus said this is because the funeral process could go on a long time.

It’s not like we do here sometimes where two days later or maybe, I’ve never heard the next day, But sometimes the day after, two days after the funeral, excuse me, two days after the death, they have the funeral and it’s an hour and it’s over. Everybody goes back to regular life. Wasn’t like that at all.

That it was an ongoing process, for lack of a better word. It was a time-consuming thing. Even the grieving period.

And so I’ve read where some preachers and commentators say that the guy might have been asking for Jesus for as much as a year. If I can just put off following you for a year, then I’ll come. And Jesus said, no. Something really interesting is I’ve read where others say, and I think there’s evidence for this as well.

And honestly, it could be both of these things where others have said the way it’s constructed, his dad may not even have even been dead yet. Saying, well, I know he can’t live forever and I’ll follow you one of these days when he’s gone. And so when you begin to look at those two possibilities, and like I said, it could be both of them.

It could be that he’s saying, my dad will be gone one of these days and then we’ll the mourning period and all that, and then I’ll come follow you. Is that a guy who’s really on fire to follow Jesus? Or is it a guy who just thinks it’s a good idea and he’ll get around to it when he has time?

Jesus didn’t have time for that thing, that kind of thing. And so that’s why he said, let the dead bury their dead. You either come now or don’t come.

It’s because we can always find an excuse to say, no, Lord. We can always find an excuse to say, okay, Lord, but wait first. And we just put it off, put it off, put it off. I keep wanting to say my younger two children, but that’s not counting Abigail.

We count them in pairs, the older two, the younger two, and then she’s just kind of there. The younger two have gotten really bad lately about me telling them to do something and say, well, I’m just, like, let’s go upstairs. It’s time to get ready for bed.

I’m just looking for Jack Jack. I’m just hungry. every possible delay tactic they can think of to the point where I just say, I don’t care what you just, just go upstairs.

I can’t be too mad at them about t