Scripture Study for

The final chapters of the book of Isaiah are set in the postexilic period, when Jerusalem was tiny, with maybe five hundred people.  To the small band of returned exiles, this was hardly evidence of God’s promised glorious restoration. Yet God assures them that  their very presence is merely the beginning of something greater:  “Zion was scarcely in labor when she bore her children. Shall I bring  a mother to the point of birth, and yet not let her child be born?”  (66:8c–9a) In other words, God’s restoration has begun and will not stop. Our passage continues with this metaphor of Jerusalem as a mother who will one day be able to nourish all her children abundantly. This will be possible because God will draw all nations to the holy city for worship, enriching the city and allowing all her  “children” to flourish (66:18–20).

Paul concludes his Letter to the Galatians by noting that those who have been arguing that to be a Christian one must become a  Jew and take on the obligations of the Law are not interested in the  Law so much as they are interested in gaining people to their side of this disputed question, “so that they may boast of your flesh” (6:13).  Paul, however, is not concerned with gaining people to his side in some sort of contest; he does not want “followers” of whom he can boast (meaning, claim as his own). Rather, he only claims as his own the cross of Christ, which has transformed him. All that matters in the end is becoming a new person in Christ. Paul is free from  concerns about what others think, about earthly honors or anything  else of which “the world” boasts, because he belongs now to Christ,  and thus “bears his marks.” 

Jesus sends out his seventy-two disciples to prepare towns for his coming by preaching repentance, curing the sick, casting out demons, and calling more disciples to Christ (laborers for the harvest). The reception will be mixed: some will receive them in peace, others will reject the call to repentance and not receive them.  In either case they are to behave as “lambs,” offering only peace and accepting gratefully what is offered to them in return. They are not to allow anything to slow them down in their urgency to proclaim the kingdom of God. When the disciples return and announce their successes, Jesus proclaims that Satan is steadily losing his grip on the world as the kingdom of God advances.