Two by Two

Jericho spies may have set a little precedent for how Jesus sent out his disciples 2x2.

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Transcript

Title: Two By Two

SubTitle: A followup to the spies in Jericho

Description: Jericho spies may have set a little precedent for how Jesus sent out his disciples 2x2.

#GospelAccordingToTheRock

2x2

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I asked myself a riddle.

I was reading Luke 10 with a verse that talks about sending out the disciples 2 by 2:

After these things the Lord appointed seventy others also, and sent them two by two before His face into every city and place where He Himself was about to go. 

-- Luke 10:1

Jesus gave more instructions to his disciples. The rest sound more like instructions given to a messenger of a prophet. What to eat, how to stay in someone's house, how to leave. How to deliver a message.

The riddle I asked: Where in the Old Testament (besides in Noah's ark) are people paired two by two?

After a little researching, I found an example that I think might apply. It's the spies Joshua sent into to Jericho.

By way of diversion...

Noah's ark was manned by four couples. Male and female. The craft had three decks: lower, middle and upper. it's possible each deck had its own famliy in charge. The ark had -- or at least started out with -- pairs of animals -- 2x2. 

After everyone was saved in the ark, the animals which had started 2x2 went out of the ark and repopulated the flooded land.

Another Diversion

Before we talk about Joshua sending two spies, we're going to go back and look briefly at how Moses sent out 12 spies, and only two of them brought back a "good report". 

I will parapharase the responses. Ten spies said, "We can't do it. We felt really inadquate." The faithful two said, "Those enemies are our bread. We can eat them up for lunch!"

But the ten spies' inadquacies turned the hearts of the people away from their promised land.

Decades later, Joshua sent out two spies to Jericho to spy it out. The names are not given. Nor the tribes these two spies came from. They were sent by Joshua and reported back to him.

When the spies came back, here's the report they gave:

24 And they said to Joshua, “Truly the Lord has delivered all the land into our hands, for indeed all the inhabitants of the country are fainthearted because of us.”

-- Joshua 2:24

That sounds like a positive report. Let's compare this report with the disciples response hundreds of years later:

Luke 10:17 Then the seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name.”

NOTE: That's basically a positive report. But Jesus warned that the mission of the seventy was not only spiritual warfare. Jesus responded by His report of what He had seen of His enemy. "I saw Satan fall like lightning." 

Jesus then followed with this command:

Verse 20 Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because your names are written in heaven.”

IN CONCLUSION, SO WHAT?

Jesus told His disciples they had power. Jesus described his own power. But he finished the mission of the seventy by telling them to rejoice that their names were written in a place where the rocks don't crack or erode, and even the books last a very, very long time.

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