Let’s Go to Work! - The Plentiful Harvest
Watch here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7XCNYJ0JjQ
This is God’s word from Matthew 9:35-37:
35And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages,
teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and
healing every disease and every affliction. 36When he saw the crowds, he had
compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd. 37Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful,
but the laborers are few; 38therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest
to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Matthew 9:27-38
I am really excited about this Let’s Go series, and I like how Pastor David made the emphasis on “US” going, because I definitely need that community aspect of things that he highlighted. I’ve got a little secret (those that really know me would probably say it’s more of an open secret), but most times, I’m more of a “let’s go, but first let me procrastinate a bit, and then I will absolutely go at some point, don’t bug me, I’m on it. I’ll get to it.”
Can anyone relate to me on this? I love all of you people who did not raise their hand and you don’t relate, because there are a bunch of you that are probably saying, “no, when I have an important task to accomplish, I get right on it and I get it done!” Thankfully, Molly and my girls are like that, and I would honestly be nowhere without that extra oomph in my life.
A friend from my home group, Kari Vreugdenhil, is a “let’s go” type of a person. Kari has done something like a dozen Ironman competitions, and she qualifies to race at the World Championship and stuff. A few years ago, poor Kari learned first hand how I am a bit of a “let’s kinda go” person when she signed on to coach me for an Ironman. I pretty much flaked on the “let’s go” training plan she prepared for me, and I ended up walking across the finish line in just the nick of time. However, if I would have trained with more of that “let’s go” gumption, I would have finished much stronger.
So, I don’t know about you, but I really need the help of friends and family with that “let’s go” mindset in my life because without them, I would probably not make it to the start line. Even more important than that accountability to stay healthy and train for Ironman races; I also really need THIS community to spur me on, as scripture says in Hebrews, toward love and good deeds. I need this community of faith to spur me on to a LET’S GO mentality in following Jesus and living out the great commission.
18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven
and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And
surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
So Jesus’ Great Commission clearly instructs us to go and make disciples of anyone and everyone.
Boom. Alright, let’s go do that!
But, how do we do that? How SHOULD we do that?
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to ME!!!”
All authority has been given to JESUS, not to you, not to me, but to HIM. So as we consider Jesus’ great commission to us, we must remember who is really doing the saving…it’s not MEESUS, it’s JESUS.
So it’s very interesting to consider this great commission in light of verses we are studying today back in Matthew 9, because I really think Jesus made it clear there in the earlier part of His ministry, who is doing the harvesting.
What did Jesus say to the disciples there in Matthew 9? He said to PRAY earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into HIS harvest.
Let me say, if that is your experience of coming to Christ, there is nothing at all wrong with that, that is fantastic. My comment here is not about how you came to faith, it is about the notion that “I” have to do the work of getting someone to believe; that “I” am the one doing the harvesting. That there are these steps that “I” must take to save sinners.
Back when I was in high school, we had this friend group that was, by-and-large a group of kids that grew up in the church, and we would be recognized as such around school. I think many of us (certainly me) felt this need to “talk” people into coming to faith in Jesus.
We had a good friend of ours, Grant, and Grant would come to youth group and hang out with us “Christians”, but he just couldn’t get his mind around coming to faith.
I remember us pounding on him, debating him, and in some ways almost berating him for not believing. I distinctly remember a long car ride up to Lake Tahoe where we cajoled him for hours about becoming a Christian, and I remember him responding, “I see that you all have this firm faith, but I just cannot get there intellectually with you.” I remember him saying, “Look, it would be much easier if I could, because it would get you guys off of my back, but I’m not going to make a decision like that that I don’t really believe.”
I caught up with Grant this past week as I was preparing for speaking this morning, and Grant reiterated how he really wanted to believe. However, he really struggled with poignant questions like, how could a good God allow some of his children to go to hell? (and boy, there is a whole other message to give on that one, but that’s for a later date)
But you see, WE wanted to “harvest” our friend. I don’t think our motives were impure, but we thought WE could do the harvesting, instead of the Lord gathering our friend to His harvest.
Well a few years later, Grant did come to faith in Jesus, and it wasn’t because of any debating or cajoling that any of us did, but it was Jesus that revealed himself to Grant in a quite miraculous way and called Grant to faith in Him.
The story Grant told me goes like this. Grant came to believe that Jesus was his one and only Lord and Savior on March 19th, 1996 at 11:19pm. He had just come off work, and he was driving over the Grapevine, headed from LA up to the Bay Area. He had been feeling challenged by a discussion that he had with someone a few months earlier. The guy had challenged Grant that it was time to decide, believe or don’t, but spending your life on the fence about Christ is not a viable plan.
So, Grant was driving over the Grapevine, and he was fully dressed up in buttoned shirt, tie, jacket, the whole nine yards and as Grant put it to me, he was at a great place in his life. He was newly graduated, and excited to start a new career. As opposed to being at a rock bottom, he was hopeful about life.
As he was driving, he had that thought about getting off that fence come into his head. In that moment he said to God, “Okay God, I’m going to give you one year to make yourself known to me, like unmistakable, like I want something like an angel to come sit down next me and tell me Jesus died on the cross for me and I need to know him in order to have salvation. If you don’t, I’m going to Hollywood with some scripts I’ve written, and some day I'm going to be successful as a Hollywood writer, and I am going to buy a yellow Porsche 911 and let Hollywood completely corrupt me.” (I’m told Hollywood can do that to folks)
Well, it didn’t take a year, but more like minutes. Suddenly, Grant says he started singing (and he tells me he is not a big singer). God put this song on his heart, the only one he remembered from back at youth group in high school. I don’t remember the song, but Grant says the words went…
“take my
eyes off this world, oh Lord.”
And as he kept singing that, he started to feel this incredible warm buzz, and then he starting thinking, if I were to become a Christian, what lyrics would I write? So he started coming up with lyrics, and he started singing those free flow lyrics, and the buzz intensified from head to toe. As he was driving there, he felt that buzz shooting down his arm, and as he would lift his hand off of the stick shift (probably only those in the room over 40 remember those), he felt energy shooting out of his arm.
As he continued to have this amazing feeling, he thought to himself, that could be the Spirit speaking to me. Then he started second guessing it, and he said to God, “Nope, that doesn’t count. That’s just a coincidence. Okay, the buzz will go away.”
It didn’t go away, in fact, it got more pronounced, and now he starts sweating profusely from head to toe, and (while he’s driving!) he starts stripping off clothes to cool down. Mind you, it’s the middle of March, and he’s got the windows down, and it was actually fairly cold outside, and he ends up getting down being shirtless, in his boxers and still sweating profusely. Then suddenly he starts feeling weak, like having completely depleted blood sugar. In that moment of complete depletion, Grant said to God, “Uncle, I believe, just let me make to the next exit for me to get some food.” It was then and there, because Grant grabbed one of his business cards he had in the car and he wrote on the backside of it“I, Grant, on March 19, 1996 at 11:19pm, became a Christian," and he signed his name next to a little x on a line under it that he made.
What came next is is really cool. He pulled into the drive-thru. He was a sweaty mess, barely any clothes on, looking like a freak, and he says he felt the Holy Spirit telling him to tell the drive thru person in the first window where he paid for his meal, what happened.. Grant was like, “Nah, that’s weird", but the Spirit kept saying it. So Grant told the next guy in the 2nd window that gave him his food. The Latino guy in the window listened and said in a thick accent, “back home my mother has had encounters like that, I believe you, Go with God!”
The next day, he told his mom about it, and without skipping a beat she said, “oh, how interesting, I think you asked God to reveal himself to you, and he did. I think the worst thing you could do is ignore it and go back to the life of sin you were leading.”
Grant has believed ever since. (and he has been able to be a working screenwriter in Hollywood, just without the yellow 911 and total corruption).
But, you see, it was in the midst of that drive that the Lord of the harvest did the harvesting of my friend Grant.
I am not going to say it was all futile having all those conversations with my friend in high school.
Although I had completely mixed-up delusions of grandeur of ME being able to harvest my friend instead of the God of the Universe drawing my friend to Himself, the Lord of the harvest still used those interactions to plant seeds in my friend. However, let there be no doubt, the Lord did the harvesting. He always does the harvesting whether it is by miraculous means like my friend Grant, or whether it’s like my experience where I believed in Jesus when I was a 5-year-old in Sunday School.
It’s HIS
harvest, we are the LABORERS in HIS harvest.
So…what does being a “laborer” look like?
A laborer “shows up” every day and waters and fertilizes the soil.
How do we primarily show up every day? We PRAY.
Take a look at what Jesus said there:
“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;
therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into
his harvest.”
I might have expected him to say something like…The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, so go get to work! He doesn’t say that, he says to pray for Lord to send out workers. It all starts with prayer. I fear that I skip that fundamental base of operations way too often. Pray!
Pray that
the Lord of the harvest will allow you to be a worker in His harvest.
pray He will
send multitudes of us into His harvest.
Pray that HE
will do the harvesting.
More than anything, pray.
I look at the story in Acts 16 where Paul and Silas were in jail. It says, “Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them” Then there’s this earthquake, and their prison door opens, and their bonds were loosed, but they don’t escape the prison, and the guard goes on to believe in Jesus. That all was a result of them being in prayer first and foremost.
Why is prayer so important? Because it works!
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if
we ask anything according to his will he hears us.
1 John 5:14
“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find;
knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the
one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.”
Matthew 7:7-8
Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe
that you have received it, and it will be yours.
Mark 11:24
And perhaps my favorite…
Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace,
that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 4:16
How do we draw near to the throne of grace which is Christ Jesus? We pray. What do we pray for? That God will send us as workers in his harvest with mercy and grace as we received from Him.
We should go out with that mercy and grace for a couple of reasons:
First, Doesn’t our lack of compassion and mercy and grace cause us to question that the harvest really IS as plentiful as Jesus says it is?
The Gospels make it vey clear that those are the very types of folks that Jesus wanted to draw near to Him, and Jesus had the harshest admonishment for those that were supposedly “righteous.”
Second, does
our lack of receiving God’s mercy and grace cause US to be skeptical that WE
can be effective workers in His harvest?
I loved this thought that Pastor David spoke about last week, that following Jesus’ resurrection, that he appeared to the 11, an imperfect 11, not to 12, but to 11. Of those 11, he had to rebuke them for their unbelief and hardness of heart. So here is this, far from perfect group of 11, and what does he do? In spite of their unbelief, their sin, he tells them to go proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. Which they did. Think about this, take Peter for example, just days before, he failed miserably. After all of what Jesus poured into Peter, after seeing miracle after miracle, after walking on water, Peter gets challenged and he denies he ever knew Jesus, not once, not twice, but three times. If I am Peter, I’m feeling like a total complete failure at this point, but Christ tells him go work in his Harvest immediately if not sooner. You see, if we were to wait around until we feel righteous enough by the law to go and be workers in the harvest, we are going to wait around for a long time. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.
So, we are to pray. Pray that the Lord of the Harvest will provide us with mercy and grace, and a firm assurance that we are justified by his grace as a gift. We should pray that we, imperfect, full of doubt, but richly forgiven people will work in his harvest and do the work to make disciples of ALL, not some, not everybody but the people we think are just too far gone. We pray that he will bring you and me and a host of others to labor in his harvest to make disciples of ALL.
Make no mistake, it all starts with prayer.
Now I also
want to make a point about what a good laborer doesn’t do.
A good laborer does not leave the flock harassed and helpless.
Reading Matthew 9 again:
When he saw the crowds, he had
compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a
shepherd.
Matthew 9:36
I’m going to
go Greek on you like I tend to do.
“he had
compassion for them”…
That sounds nice. Okay Jesus had compassion for them, cool, moving on. The Greek word there translated to compassion is a bit more visceral than appears by just reading the English translation compassion. The Greek goes like this:
When he saw the crowds he had SPLANGKH-NID-ZOM-AHEE for them. That word comes from the root, splanxna, which is defined as the inward parts, especially the nobler entrails, the heart, lungs, liver and kidneys. Jesus’ compassion wasn’t some mundane compassion, no, he was gut-wrenched for these people, he was hurting in the core of his being for the people.
Why?
Because they
were harassed and helpless, they were sheep without a good shepherd.
Just before these verses, Jesus heals blind men, and he casts out a demon that had caused a man to be mute. After he does these things, the Pharisees response is that he must be casting out demons by the prince of demons.
That is a
very strange response, isn’t it?
The response is not to marvel that these blind men are given sight, or to have joy that the mute man was able to speak after Jesus cast out a demon. No, their response is, Jesus must be a demon, but strangely casting out the very evil that he himself is. It’s kind of a weird, not very logical conclusion to me.
It seems that these Pharisees are completely blind to the true glory of God. Later in Matthew 23 he actually calls the scribes and Pharisees “blind guides”.
He says,
“Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites. For you travel
across sea and land to make a single convert and when he becomes a convert you
make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. Woe to you, blind
guides.”
Matthew 23:15-16a
Interesting contrast here, the blind men Jesus heals, profess to believe that Jesus can heal them, and have faith in him, and they are made to see. These Pharisees that have physical sight, but have no belief in the glory of God right in front of them, and Jesus says they are blind. Even more scary is that they are guides, blindly leading His sheep. Of course, Jesus is gut-wrenched. You have masses and masses of what scripture says are Children of God, His children, and they are desperate to know where to go, how to live, but they are being led by guides who are completely blind. Blind to God’s grace and truth right in front of them. Instead, these blind guides, these Pharisees are selling a lie, a lie that the people need to make themselves in the image of God and must make themselves righteous by using the law. Of course, we cannot make ourselves righteous by the law, when we try to do that, we make ourselves self-righteous. We pretend to be righteous when we cannot be righteous. We become hypocrites because we harass others that they must be righteous, that they must follow some set of prescribed rules to be righteous.
God is love, but we make a lie about love. The “blind guides,” the Pharisees, were supposedly teaching about love. They taught about what Jesus said were the first and second greatest commandments, that you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and that you shall love your neighbor as yourself. But they were blind to God’s true love for His children, and they were telling a lie about love and telling a harassed and helpless flock of sheep,
“YOU NEED TO TRY HARDER, YOU NEED TO BE BETTER!”
For you parents out there, can you imagine if someone was telling your loved child,
was harassing them saying? “you are bad, you need to be better, and if you don’t, your mom and dad won’t love you.”
Well, I’d be pretty upset, and I think my insides would hurt. I would be worried that my kids might believe that lie, that they must earn my love, when, in fact, there is nothing my girls can do to lose my love for them.
As workers in God’s harvest, let’s be mindful to exhibit God’s love by simply showing others love. Let's extend grace to others as God has so richly blessed us with His grace. Jesus said to his disciples, "deny yourselves, take up your cross and follow me."
In the gospel accounts I see a lot about Jesus spending time with those that the Pharisees would render unredeemable. I see Jesus speaking the truth, but speaking it in love, to tax collectors, to prostitutes, to sinners. When the Pharisees questioned why he would eat with tax collectors and sinners, Jesus says, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.” There are verses in Matthew, Mark and Luke that describe that situation, and they describe it as Jesus was “reclining” with these sinners. He was relaxing with them. While calling these “sinners” to repentance, Jesus seems to have done that in a manner completely the opposite of harassing, but did that with comfort. So, let’s do that. Let’s deny ourselves, deny our desire to try to make ourselves feel righteous by harassing others about their unrighteousness, and let’s follow Jesus, the Lord of HIS harvest in the way he does.
Back in October, I was doing this thing where early every morning I would work through passages in 1st and 2nd Peter, and then I would head out on a run. I spent that time running in prayer and trying to actively listen to what the Spirit might put on my heart. Scripture says that if we lack wisdom, we should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given. I was really trying to lean into that, and I prayed earnestly that I would hear God’s voice and what wisdom he would provide. As I was running one morning, these words were put on my heart,
“Speak MY truth BOLDLY, but gently.”
“Speak my truth boldly, but gently.”
I think there is something to that, I am continuing to work out how to balance that boldness with gentleness, but I think that it has something to do with genuinely loving others. It’s really hard to harass others if I am leading with love. So we can pray that we will love first and foremost, because we know that we are to abide in faith, hope and love, but greatest is love, and God is love. We can pray that in God’s great love, he will quicken his harvest to belief.
In studying to give this message, I read something from someone much smarter than me about how God does the harvesting. So, the following words are not my words, but something that R.C. Sproul wrote in his exposition on Matthew. He wrote:
“Anyone who is a Christian has had that experience. All believers once were dead in their sins, and it was while they were dead in that state, walking according to the course of this world, that God quickened them to spiritual life. The moment He gave them that spiritual life, each of them said, “Yes, I believe.” Maybe others had planted seeds in their lives. Perhaps others had watered those seeds. Still, they were hanging on the stalk in the field until God came.”
I pray earnestly for that. I pray that He will do His harvest work and quicken EVERY person to spiritual life in Christ, and I pray that He will give me and you and a multitude of others, a love for ALL of His children. I pray that we might labor in the planting of seeds of faith, and watering those seeds with the truth of His grace.
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