<p>10:11&nbsp;<em>And into whatever city or village you shall enter, search out who in it is worthy</em>- The contrast is between the worthy and those who don't accept the Gospel (:13,14). So the worthy would be those who have responded to the Gospel already. The Lord's fame had gone throughout Israel (Mt. 4:24) so the apostles weren't going into totally virgin territory. They were following up on the rumours people had already heard about Jesus. &quot;Worthy&quot; seems a strange term to use for the believers, but maybe already the Lord was teaching the idea of imputed righteousness. Those who had believed in Him were &quot;worthy&quot;, and He expected them to likewise consider the preachers of the Gospel to be &quot;worthy&quot; of their support. Belief in Him, therefore, was not without practical demands; it was natural and expected of the Lord that those who had believed in Him should provide materially for His preachers. The first mention of this word for &quot;worthy&quot; in the NT is in Mt. 3:8, where John the Baptist asks his followers to bring forth fruit worthy of repentance. Perhaps 'the worthy' had become a technical term for those who had responded to John's teaching about Jesus, or at least openly confessed faith in Jesus. The mission of the apostles here may have been to follow up on them. This would mean that the information in Lk. 7:4 that a man was &quot;worthy&quot; of a healing may have implied that he was one of those who had responded to John the Baptist.</p>
<p><em>And stay with them until you go</em>- To build relationships, to enhance the possibility of a house church developing there later, and to avoid the temptation to shop around for the best accommodation or the wealthiest sympathizers. Luke adds: &ldquo;Go not from house to house&rdquo;. The Lord at least twice stressed to His disciples that they were not to go preaching from house to house, but rather focus upon one house in a village and make that the centre of their work (Lk. 9:4; 10:7). Clearly His intention was that they built up house groups rather than scattered converts. Perhaps this was alluded to by Paul when he criticized sisters who went spreading gossip &ldquo;from house to house&rdquo; (1 Tim. 5:13). He surely had house churches in mind.</p>