Speaker preaches on Matthew 9:35-38, framing the "harvest" as spiritually hungry individuals like those in Galilee who need shepherds. He warns that modern convenience softens believers, urging them to leave comfort for hard work in evangelism. While noting young men seeking truth in Orthodoxy or the manosphere may be ready, he insists only Christ offers salvation. The sermon concludes with an urgent call to pray for laborers and personally enter the field to cut and bind souls before this season ends. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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A Call to Do Hard Things00:04:21
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Good morning.
Will you stand for me, please, for the reading of God's word?
Our passage this morning is Matthew chapter 9, verses 35 through 38.
While you're finding that in your Bibles or pulling out your notes, I will just mention this passage, this series of verses, is the one that Charles Spurgeon said weighed the most heavily on his heart his entire life as a Christian.
So, brace yourselves.
The passage says this And 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.
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Then he said to his disciples, 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.
This is the word of the Lord.
You may be seated.
There is a renewed call, and I'm glad for it, among some of the Christians and conservative people in our nation to make our children do hard things.
There's even a renewed call to challenge ourselves to do hard things.
And in a lot of ways, because of modern convenience, we've become a bit of a soft people.
We have convenience and ease all around us.
And the fact that we have all of this ease means that we don't have to do the hard things that previous generations did.
Previously, if you didn't chop the wood, you froze in December.
Previously, if you didn't plant the crops, you starved in September.
And yet, that's not the world that we live in.
We can afford in our time to avoid doing hard things.
Well, the good news in this passage this morning is that it is a call to do hard things.
It is a call to do hard work.
And so, my prayer as we dive into this passage together is that the Holy Spirit would, first of all, convict us and then enable us and equip us to do the work that He's calling us to do.
So, my main goal this morning is to go through this brief passage twice.
We're going to go through it very quickly and just talk about what's there, and then we're going to circle back and we're going to talk about what things are in there that we can pull out and apply to our time.
The passage here at the end of chapter 9 is a pivot point in the book of Matthew.
The book of Matthew is a story, it's an argument.
There are certain times when it pivots and changes directions, and this is one of them.
It caps the end of a long section that began in chapter 4.
We see a very similar verse to the one that we read here in chapter 9, 35 in Matthew 4, 23, where Matthew said, And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.
And healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
Very similar to what we just saw just now.
So, Matthew started this section and he's ending this section, describing what happened in this section.
Chapters 5 through 7 were the Sermon on the Mount, where Matthew gives an example of the kind of teaching and preaching that Jesus was doing in the region of the Galilee.
And then chapters 8 and 9 show primarily how Jesus accompanied his preaching of the gospel with healings and casting out demons.
And during this whole section, Matthew 5 through 9, Jesus has been doing two primary things.
Jesus Among the Fringes00:14:09
First, he himself has been preaching the gospel of the kingdom.
He's been doing the work of ministry.
He's been going throughout all the Galilee and doing it himself.
Second, though, and though the disciples don't realize it, what he's been doing is he's been training the disciples to eventually overtake his mission.
In chapter 10, the very next chapter, the next thing that we're going to see is that Jesus takes these 12 disciples and he sends them out to do the exact same kind of work that he's been doing that Matthew recorded in chapters 5 through 9.
And the book of Matthew just continues to expand outward until we get to the end, which we know the Great Commission at the end, where Jesus commissions the church, believers in the church, to now take the mission and the message of God out into all the world.
So that's how Matthew starts.
It's Christ doing the work, commissioning 12, and gets bigger and bigger and bigger.
From chapter 4 on until where we've been today, and even the next couple of chapters, Jesus has been going around the region where he grew up.
This is his backyard, the Galilee is.
He grew up in the town of Nazareth.
Galilee was on the northwest of the Red Sea.
Nazareth was a small town.
Estimates say maybe 400 people in the town.
The whole region of the Galilee was about 30 miles across.
So back then, people walked most places.
You could walk across the whole place in about two days pretty easily.
By the way, just to give a little perspective, a lot of the towns in Texas, as Texas was developing, they made mail stops about 30 miles apart.
Because that was about how far you could responsibly ride a horse in a day.
And around those little mail stops, little towns grew up.
And so, if you happen to look at a map sometime, a lot, not all, but a lot of towns in Texas are about 30 miles apart.
That's about the region that the Galilee occupied, about a 30 mile radius, or diameter, actually, not radius.
Well, what has Jesus been doing this whole time around the Galilee?
Verse 35 tells us it says he was preaching in the synagogues, he was teaching.
And he was healing their diseases and afflictions.
Okay, so he's going all throughout the region.
It's a region he would have known well.
He grew up there.
He's going to the towns.
He's going to the cities.
Like I said, this was not a huge area, but it did have a lot of small towns and even some small cities.
The towns were maybe a couple hundred to a thousand.
Some of the cities may have been 10,000 to 15,000 people.
Now, it's important to note that because of its proximity to the Lake of Galilee, because of the weather, because of the soil in the area, While the people in the Galilee region were not super wealthy, they were not poor.
They were middle class.
It was pretty easy with the farming and the lake or as a tradesman to support a family in this area.
The problem that they have that we're going to see in this passage was not really a financial one.
They weren't the homeless and the beggars and the poor and the outcasts.
And Jesus goes through this kind of normal area, preaching and teaching.
That's point A.
He was preaching and teaching and healing.
Notice what Jesus does.
He goes to the people wherever they are.
He is no respecter of persons.
He goes to the cities.
Yes, it says the cities, but he also goes to the towns and to the villages.
And he teaches and preaches in their synagogues where men were already gathered who wanted the truth, who wanted to try to worship God properly.
And he heals their diseases and afflictions.
So the pattern here is interesting.
He would start out, and we see this pattern, by the way, replicated by the apostles in the book of Acts.
He would go to a town, he would go to a synagogue, he would preach there.
Logical.
That's where people are trying to worship God.
He would heal people, he would cast out demons, and then often what he would do is he would leave the towns for a little while.
Now, this was a very strategic move on Jesus' part, and it really gives a lot of insight into understanding the chapter or the passage for today.
It's likely that there were large crowds following Jesus, and so leaving these small towns was strategic on one hand.
The towns probably couldn't support these thousands and thousands of people that were following Jesus around the Galilee.
But there's a second strategic thing going on here.
When Jesus would preach in the synagogues and in the towns and then leave, many people would follow him out into the inconvenient wilderness or into the mountain or into the countryside.
And this forced a level of commitment for those who were interested in what he was saying.
The crowds followed him once they heard what he said and saw what he did.
And this indicated to Jesus an attitude that at least there is interest on their part.
Their daily routine to hear what I have to say and see what I'm doing.
And that attitude is incredibly important.
It indicates to Jesus where God is working in the region, whose hearts the Holy Spirit might be stirring.
This is because, in spite of their relative material security, they, the people of the Galilee, had a deep spiritual problem.
When Christ looked at the crowds that were gathering around him and had come out of the town to be with him, he had compassion on them.
Not for their financial situation, not because they were all homeless and second class citizens.
They had things together, actually.
They looked probably fine on the outside.
People would have liked to live in the Galilee.
But really, when it came to their deepest needs, their internal needs, here they were as bankrupt as bankrupt could be.
They had no hope spiritually.
And the thing is, and this is what's so key, some of them were beginning to realize this.
Listen to how John Gill describes this.
He describes the state of the people in the Galilee.
He says, No due care was taken of them to gather and keep them together, to feed them with wholesome doctrine.
But they were as objects, as outcasts that no man regarded, and in great danger of the loss and ruin of their immortal souls.
And so when Jesus sees these people, Who have this vague desire to worship God, a vague sense that something's wrong, and they're coming out to him.
He has compassion.
This is very important because what Jesus recognizes is a spiritual condition, not just a physical one.
Throughout this sermon today, I'm going to say some things like they were wanting to seek God or they were looking for something more.
And I'm in no way trying to undermine or downplay the reality that God is sovereign in all of salvation.
Every single person whom the Father calls, Christ will receive.
But from our perspective, when we're saying who is ready to hear, who is ready, we look for who the Holy Spirit is doing a work in.
And often that work is people becoming aware that they need something, that they're desperate in a spiritual sense.
And so when I say that through the sermon, that's the context that I'm saying that with.
Many followed him from city to city, town to town, inconveniencing themselves, spending days or weeks away from their family.
And it's because they were helpless and lost, and they knew it.
And for this reason, Christ had compassion on them.
And so that's point B. Christ demonstrates compassion.
It's interesting in this story that Jesus does not have compassion on all of the people that he encounters, not this kind of compassion.
Rather, it says that he has this great compassion on the crowds who came to him, who hungered and thirsted, in a sense, for righteousness and for true teaching and true religion.
In fact, in chapter 11, just a few pages over, Jesus is going to pronounce woes on the cities that he's visiting here.
He pronounces judgment on woe on some, but has great compassion on a select group of others.
And it's those who were scattered and helpless.
And so, in the face of these people who are lost and spiritually bankrupt, Christ has compassion.
And because of that compassion for them, he's not just ambivalent.
He's not just kind of this supercomputer brain who's just running calculations.
He has a compassionate reaction to them, and he makes an observation to his disciples, and he gives them a command.
His observation is that the harvest is ready, it's full.
Now, this harvest obviously is spiritual.
He's talking about souls who are ready, in a sense, to be brought in to hear the gospel and to respond.
How does he know that the harvest is ready?
Well, obviously, he's God.
But at the same time, he's training his disciples who are not God.
And so I think there are some clues.
Number one, for the last couple of chapters, we've seen unexpected people coming to faith in Christ a centurion, a religious leader, a woman who was unclean and an outcast.
So when we see unexpected people coming to Christ, that's a sign that the fields are ripe.
Second, there were people on the fringes.
There are always people on the fringes in every society, but there are people on the fringes.
Who were hungry for truth and for true preaching.
And third, this is really important, there was a lack of true spiritual leadership.
In good times, there's good spiritual leadership.
And so one by one, a person grows up in a Christian family, the Lord works in his or her heart, and boom, there's a father, a mother, a pastor.
But in this case, in the Galilee, there were people who were awakening to their spiritual condition, and there was no spiritual leadership to guide them.
Does that sound like our time?
That is when God is preparing a harvest.
And the thing about a harvest is when it's ready, when it's harvest time, it has to be brought in right away, or the harvest will spoil.
I'm sure you all have seen this driving around.
We drive past many, many farms and fields, and in the fall, all summer, we watch the grain get taller and more golden, and the heads of grain more full.
We watch the corn.
Sometimes it's Like one day to the next, it's taller.
You drive past a place and you could see around that corner before, and now you can't see around the corner because the corn has gotten taller.
And you've all probably had this where you're driving by one day and the field is full and lush and ready, and then two days later you drive by and there's just an empty field.
Because when the harvest is ready, it's all hands on deck.
You bring it in as quickly as possible.
And Jesus sees the situation with the people of the gala and he says to his disciples, Behold, the harvest is at hand.
The harvest is the souls of these people in whom the Holy Spirit was working to create a desire to worship and a hunger for spiritual food.
And apparently, there were many of them.
This is another reason why Jesus is so compassionate.
It's many.
The text says that the harvest was plentiful.
And yet, in spite of the fact that the harvest is plentiful, it's a lot and it's ready right now, there was no one ready for it.
There were no workers to go out into the field.
John the Baptist was in prison.
Jesus, at this point, was literally the only one doing this work.
In other words, the harvest is on the verge of spoiling, even as the corn and the wheat and the fruit is on the vine and on the stalk.
And so, in response to this, he gives his disciples a command.
This is point C.
He teaches how God works.
The command is to pray that God would send laborers out into the field.
God arranges circumstances providentially so that while He is indeed sovereign over salvation, He often orchestrates events and means that will prepare people to hear the gospel.
Now, there's a chapter break here.
You see that big number 10 right below this.
And we have to remember that the chapter breaks were not present in the original.
And so we might be tempted to miss the point that while Jesus does command His disciples to pray earnestly, That God would send laborers out in the harvest.
The very next thing that Matthew writes is that Jesus gathers the 12, and then in verse 5, he sends them out.
It's like he says, Okay, guys, pray that God would send laborers out into that harvest.
Let's gather around.
Everyone, gather around.
Let's pray.
Matthew, you pray.
Mark, you pray.
Okay, we've all prayed.
Okay, guess what?
God just answered the prayer.
You guys are those workers.
We can't miss that.
We can't separate the command to pray from the likelihood, or not the likelihood, from the The fact that God was about to send them out as the answer to that prayer.
So that's the text.
Well, what does this mean for us now?
I want to pull out, I think, four applications.
The Forgotten Ripe for Harvest00:13:23
First of all, the condition of the field at that time and the condition of the field in our time.
Notice that the right field is not simply the people who have been forgotten and are on the fringes.
There are many people who are on the fringes and have been many people on the fringes, forgotten, downtrodden, etc., throughout history who have no desire or softness for Christ.
But often it's those people who are forgotten and who God puts in them a desire for truth that are the ripe harvest.
Spurgeon has a warning for the people in his time and for us as well.
I think it's in your notes there.
He said this Jesus did not go about among the masses with an Undiscerning admiration of them.
I do not hear him praising them as, quote, the finest peasantry or, quote, the sinew of the nation, as some will do, but neither, so he didn't just say, because you're poor, you're the best, but neither do we see in him any trace of aversion to them, as though he felt out of place in their society.
He was often saddened by their follies and grieved by their sins, but he never loathed them or spoke contemptuously of them.
This is where the social justice crowd went wrong.
They think that simply because someone is oppressed or poor or marginalized or forgotten or downtrodden, that this means that they are somehow more virtuous than the rest of all people.
They're closer or even in the kingdom of God.
That's what the kingdom of God is all about.
The forgotten masses are not inherently good or virtuous just by being forgotten.
Many times in history, the poor have actually maintained hard hearts.
Two quick examples.
When John Wycliffe and his team were trying to translate the Bible into English, often it was the poor peasants that they were living and working among that were turning them in to the leaders in the area.
Something similar happened with the Protestant Huguenots in Catholic France, where it was the poor people that rejected while the rich people converted to Protestantism.
And so it's not just that you're poor or marginalized that makes you ripe for the harvest.
And yet, there's another application here that we need to be careful of.
It has been noted that many of the young men on the fringe, the young people on the fringe of our society, are those who are ripe for the harvest now.
And I don't disagree with this at all.
We do see a lot of signs.
We see young men, especially, turning to any form of teaching that they can.
Unfortunately, many to Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholicism, or maybe they're just red pilling getting into the manosphere.
But the fact that they have been overlooked by the evangelical elites, by the cultural elites, the people in Washington, D.C., does not inherently make them the ones who are ripe for harvest.
Even the fact that many of them are red pilling does not necessarily mean that.
Jesus teaches that those who are ripe for the harvest are those who have an awareness of a need but thirst for righteousness, thirst for truth.
And on top of that, they are those who have no one to tell the truth to them.
This is indeed the case.
As I said, many of the younger generation are turning to Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism.
But remember, the harvest is reaped only among those who will repent of their sin and turn to Christ.
We are in a cultural moment where many of our battles blur together.
We welcome co belligerents who are not necessarily Christians in our cultural and political battles, but the harvest in this passage that Jesus is talking about are the people who are called from death to life.
It's among those in whom God has placed sovereignly a hunger for the truth and who, upon hearing their sins preached, repent and believe in Christ.
Red pilling is not necessarily the same as hungering and thirsting for righteousness.
It may be a sign that people are looking for the truth.
But the true test is then when we do present Jesus and preach Christ crucified and preach about their sin, then we see whether the Holy Spirit has been working in their hearts to give them faith.
And that is why we must remember that the primary work that God has called us to do is not merely, although it is important, to gather like minded people in a political cause or a cultural cause.
It's not enough to simply gather your family together and give them a strong sense of family identity.
It's not enough to simply teach your children the right way to think about the world, the right way to think about social issues.
Jesus saw evidence that many in the crowds who came out to him wanted truth and were desperate for the gospel.
They wanted to know and worship God.
And so he preached to them to see who would repent.
And those are the people, those are the people on whom he had compassion.
If God is calling someone to himself, What that person needs in all of his searching or uncertainties or despairing, even, what that person needs is to be fed with truth from the Word of God.
He needs to be led to Jesus and confronted with this sin.
Sheep are stupid.
Even with a shepherd, they are likely to wander off, to get injured.
But without a shepherd, as these in the passage, and as many around us who are waking up but still have no shepherd, they are doomed.
There are many around us in this situation.
There are many women who are discovering their spirituality on Instagram or on TikTok from social media.
There are many men who legitimately hunger for truth but are looking in the wrong places, especially turning to anyone who will say something that's controversial.
But there is only one truth that saves.
And unless these people who are waking up hear about Jesus, they will all follow a false voice.
It's actually almost worse.
You get woken up, you realize that you have a need, but no one gives you the truth, and so you follow even worse paths.
You follow the path to some cunning wolf, you follow a path that goes over a cliff.
You see, before Jesus sent his laborers out into the harvest, even the people in the crowds who were coming out to hear his teaching, who were spiritually hungry, who were alert to the situation around them, they were still spiritually doomed until they repented.
In the same way, the red pilled without Christ are doomed.
The trad wives without Christ are doomed.
There may be an interest, and that could be a sign that the harvest among them is ripe, and I think it is.
But because they are sheep without a shepherd, they will run to all sorts of false promises to try to satisfy that interest.
They may sense that something is wrong, but if they are not introduced to Christ, they will have no means to fix that problem.
And so, like a child who is very thirsty and goes into the kitchen, But he can't reach the water.
He has a legitimate thirst, but he just grabs something from under the sink.
It's the dish soap, it's the vinegar, it's the bleach.
The thirst was legitimate, but what he drank was not going to cure his thirst.
Many people who wake up and are thirsty for Christ will inevitably end up drinking something that will kill them.
And that's why Christ had compassion on them.
They were in a desperate state.
They wanted more, but no one could give it to them.
And so let's look at the attitude of Christ here, the compassion that he had.
This is point B of section two.
It says, It is not their economic condition that alerts Christ, that calls his compassion.
It is not the fact that they were being taken advantage of financially, as Galilee was somewhat prosperous.
No, it was the fact that no one was tending to their spiritual lives, no one was feeding them.
Preaching repentance to them or healing them.
In the same way, we, Christians, are to have great compassion, not simply on the needy, although we should, but on those who desire truth but have no one to give it to them.
This is a work of God.
As I said, Jesus' great concern here is for the sheep who have no shepherd.
Now, what does this mean, they have no shepherd?
I think there are two senses here.
First, no one was introducing them to the true shepherd, that is Christ.
The teachings of the Old Testament were supposed to point forward to Christ so that when He came, the people would recognize Him as the true shepherd, the true leader, the true provider for their needs, and would rejoice.
But the true shepherd had been hidden from them.
In our time, also, many things try to hide Christ, the good shepherd, from the people around us.
Many voices seek to drown out the voice of the great shepherd.
In fact, I think we live in one of the noisiest times.
In history, where a million false messiahs and false promises call out for everyone's attention, unbelief is always a problem that only God can cure.
But the amount of voices and noise calling to the people in our time is much greater, I think, even than in that time.
And if Christ had compassion on them because no one would give them the truth, how much more ought we to have compassion on the people around us to whom no one will give the truth?
We have come to the point now where no one trusts anything.
Even as Christians, with Christ as our anchor, we don't know who to trust.
And I think that this can sometimes tempt us even to doubt our own doctrine and our own faith.
And if that's a temptation for us, imagine the whirlwind and tornado and the noise that unbelievers live in.
They can't hear the truth.
The world is a deafening roar.
On the one hand, there's the Train that's plowing through, like in a small town in the middle of the night, and wakes everybody up, saying nothing is reliable, nihilism is the only answer.
And in response to that, a million charlatans rise up and say, I know you don't trust anyone, trust me.
I have the answers, listen to me, and follow me.
And so, though Jesus promises, and this is true in John 10, that his sheep will hear his voice, we see that many currently are incapable of hearing it because of all the noise around them.
Not because they're unwilling and not because the Spirit is not able, but because the background noise is deafening.
But there's a second sense where Jesus has compassion on them because they have no shepherd.
In 1 Peter 5, Peter refers to Christ as the chief shepherd, but also to the fact that God has appointed human shepherds as well.
And so as Jesus looks out over these crowds of people who long to hear the truth, he also recognizes that not only do they not know the true shepherd, they don't even have proper human help.
To hear the truth and to apprehend spiritual things.
They are completely on their own, stumbling down any path to who knows what disaster.
People need shepherds.
Sheep need shepherds who will watch over their souls, who will lead them to Jesus, who will bind their wounds.
And a majority of the people around us do not, it's not only that they don't have a shepherd, it's that they don't know that they need one.
And yet, as Jesus said, though there are many who have a desire to at least hear the truth, Though the harvest may be ready, there are very few workers.
There are very few shepherds.
There are very few pastors.
There are very few evangelists.
There are very few Christians who know Jesus and who are also willing to go out into the fields to tell people about him.
And notice, this is a fault of the people.
God Sends Workers Out00:15:23
God had prepared the harvest by creating restlessness inside of these people in the Galilee.
But according to Jesus, part of the Terrible condition of these people is that not only were they lost, not only did they have no shepherd, not only were false shepherds preaching at them, but there was no one available to go out and fix that problem.
So not only are they helpless to find relief for uncertainties, but there is no one who will go out and offer them that relief.
And for this reason, also, Jesus has compassion.
And brothers and sisters, so should we.
We forget if you've been a Christian for a long time.
You forget the terror of living in uncertainty without the rock of Christ underneath your feet.
This compassion that Christ felt, we should feel it also in a mighty, moving, motivating way.
Listen to how Spurgeon describes this compassion that Jesus had.
He says, Our Savior looked upon the people among whom he moved in a manner worthy of our imitation.
He was a man of great feeling, and he was, quote, moved with compassion.
As the Greek word has it, his bowels yearned.
His sympathies were awakened.
He could not look upon a mass of men with an indifferent countenance.
His inmost soul was stirred.
But at the same time, he was no mere enthusiast.
He was as calmly practical as if he had been a cool calculator.
If he sighed, he did something more than sigh.
He proceeded to aid those whom he pitied.
And in order to render that aid to the people in that area, he commanded.
There are many for this is point C. There are many who hunger for truth but have no one to give it to them.
And because we, following Christ's example, have compassion on those people around us, the first thing that we are commanded to do is to pray that the Lord of the harvest would send workers out so that the harvest does not spoil.
I love this title for God.
God is the Lord of the harvest, it is His harvest.
And we're commanded to have compassion on the people who are out in the harvest.
Compassion.
It's dangerous.
It's dangerous because, number one, to feel compassion is uncomfortable.
And number two, when we feel true compassion, it usually leads us to do something even more uncomfortable render aid and assistance to inconvenience ourselves.
Compassion is the feeling of one who sees that someone is in a bad situation and desires to do something to alleviate it.
But we are indeed to learn from our Lord and to feel compassion for the lost around us.
What should we do in response to this compassion?
Well, here the Lord is very kind to us, for he gives us a great and mighty and noble task, but also one that at the same time is simple.
Jesus tells his disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest that he would send workers out into the harvest, that the harvest may in fact be fruitful rather than lost.
This might seem like a small thing.
Yeah, yeah, pray.
Good.
What do we do?
No, don't move on yet.
This is no small thing, and it ought always to be a discipline of Christians in every age, but especially in times of turmoil.
We are told to pray, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
And then at the end of Matthew, we're also told that we have been commissioned to take the gospel out to disciple all the nations.
How do those two things happen?
Do you know how they happen?
This prayer here in our text.
We pray that the Lord would send workers into the harvest to do the work.
The situation at the time seemed desperate.
There were no shepherds at all for the people, not a single person to go out and reap the harvest.
The situation is equally dire now.
It seems that many in our time and in our land are falling through the cracks.
With no hope of someone to catch them with the message of the gospel before they perish.
And in these situations, it's good to hear what Matthew Henry wrote about this verse.
This also is in your notes.
He said, What was their duty in this case, the duty of the disciples?
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest.
Note, he says, the melancholy or the sad aspect of the times and the deplorable state of precious souls should much excite and quicken our prayer.
When we see the condition of the people around us, we should be greatly excited and motivated to much prayer.
When things look discouraging, we should pray more, and then we should complain and fear less.
And we should adapt our prayers to the present exigencies.
That's the needs, the present needs of the church.
Such an understanding we ought to have of the times as to know not only what Israel ought to do, does it turn a phrase here, but what Israel ought to pray for.
Notice in this prayer that Jesus commands something incredible.
God is the one working in the hearts of the people, He is the one drawing them to Himself.
He is working on the heart of possibly your children, your co workers, people in our nation and our state.
He is working in their hearts so that they see that there is something wrong and they desire something true and good and right.
That is what God is doing.
And yet, Jesus says this if the laborers do not go out into the fields, those souls will be lost.
Again, I absolutely affirm the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of election that everyone who's predestined will be saved and sanctified.
But listen, listen to how Jesus says it.
Pray that the Lord of the harvest would send out workers into the field.
Spurgeon gives a long quote here, and I'm going to read the whole thing.
And he illustrates how this looks from our human temporal perspective.
He, Jesus, did not say, He didn't look out there and see the situation.
He did not say, The harvest truly is plenteous and the laborers are few, but that matters not.
God can bless a few and make them accomplish as much as many.
He believed in his Father's omnipotence, but he also believed that the Lord would work by means and that many laborers were required.
To gather in a plenteous harvest, and therefore he told the disciples to pray for them.
He believed in the results being proportionate to the means used, and he therefore bade us go to the root of the matter practically.
On the other hand, neither did our Lord say, The laborers are few, therefore pray that God would do the work.
He can do it alone, and he has no need of man.
You think too much of man, your one man ministry ought to be put away.
No.
Jesus did not talk so.
We do not see any trace of such sentiments in our Savior's teaching.
Our Master never made too much of men, but he made a very great deal of men anointed of the Spirit and sent to preach.
In fact, he taught us to pray for them.
It is true that God is not served by human hands as though he needed anything, but he has chosen to spread the call, the message of the gospel, primarily through Human laborers.
And because of this, when there is a shortage of labor, when the harvest is full, Christ instructs us to pray earnestly that God would send out faithful workers, many faithful workers.
This ought to be our prayer as well.
We ought to pray that in our land and in our towns and in our families and in our jobs and in our neighborhoods, God would send laborers out to do the work of bringing in the harvest.
But remember what I said before Jesus instructed them to pray and then immediately answered that prayer by sending them out.
In the same way as we pray for laborers, it is quite likely that God also expects us to go into the field and participate in this harvest.
You may have noticed that I've been referring to our role in the harvest.
And you may wonder if that's proper given the nature of the text.
Doesn't this passage speak of shepherds, the need of pastors and evangelists, which are gifts and roles given to the church?
It is certainly true.
There's a special sense where God is saying, pray for those who can actually lead new churches, be evangelists, dedicated to the work of the evangelist.
Furthermore, you may object to what I'm saying here if you notice that Matthew 10 6, Gives us the scope of the field that Jesus was sending the disciples out into and says that he was sending them to the lost sheep of Israel, not to go to the Samaritans, not to go to the Gentiles.
Why then do I apply this passage to us now, all of us?
Well, first of all, because this image of the harvest being ripe is one that Jesus uses multiple times in the Gospels, and in particular in John 4, when he's dealing with the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well.
Who's now outside of the scope that he gave to the disciples originally?
He says, This, my food is to do the will of him who sent me to accomplish his work.
Do you not say there are yet four months, then comes the harvest?
Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.
And then the next couple of verses show how the great number of people in Samaria believed in Christ.
Second, the apostles took the instructions that we see in Matthew 10.
Matthew 10 is the instructions that Jesus gives to them of how to go out and carry out the mission of preaching the gospel.
Well, the disciples do it in Matthew 10.
And then when you look in Acts, the apostles, as they go to Gentile towns and Jewish towns, they do the exact same thing.
They shake the dust off their feet.
They go to the synagogues first.
So they saw this model of the harvest being ripe as what they were going to continue to carry out in the gospel age.
And third, there's the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 3 where Paul lays out the mechanics of how this works.
One plants, another waters, but God causes it to grow.
So while it's true that Jesus was sending these disciples in that context to that specific region of Israel, This paradigm of looking for ripe fields, of praying for laborers, and then of God's people going out into those fields has endured throughout the entire church age to this very day.
So there is a sense where all of us at some point will work in God's field to bring in the harvest.
Now, it may be to a lesser degree or a greater degree depending on your station in life or if you have a lot of little kids running around your house, what your job is, etc.
But whether either with a broad or a narrow focus, all of us are to be involved in this.
Because of that, what I want to do to close is I want to look at the last section and see three important characteristics of what gospel labor looks like.
And these will be quite brief.
And just to be honest, I'm stealing these from Spurgeon.
I think they're really helpful, though, to us.
If at some point we are all going to be laborers in the field of souls, it's important to know what that labor looks like.
Okay, so this is point D.
The laborer must first go into the field.
Second, he must cut.
Third, he must gather and bind up the sheaves.
First of all, notice something really, really important.
The work is in the field.
The work is in the field.
It is all well and good to sit in a cottage up on a hill and look down on the farm, the sunset going down, casting its rays across the field.
Full ripe grain, acres and acres of it, and to sit down and say, Ah, what a beautiful sight.
In this field, in this parable, the owner of the field sends the workers out into the field.
That is to say, we are supposed to be among the people to discern who is ripe, who is receptive, and in whom is the Holy Spirit working and moving.
This means that to some degree you have to be around people who are not Christians.
This will be easier for some of you.
Maybe you have a job that has a lot of conversation or a lot of freedom to just kind of, you know, talk to people in your office.
But if you stay at home as a mom or you work remotely, this could be a little bit more difficult.
But the principle here is the labor is out in the field.
That's where the Lord of the harvest sends his workers.
Obviously, our children, until they are converted, are part of this field.
I'm not sure they're quite the same here because they're not, in a sense, scattered with no shepherd.
But they are a legitimate part of your gospel work, parents.
No, the labor that we would perform in this passage, we perform for the Lord of the harvest, is out among the people.
So here are some ideas.
Maybe you could try to go to the park with some women in your neighborhood and their kids.
Maybe you could join a group of men who share a hobby that you have.
Maybe you spend your lunch break instead of in your office or in your cubicle or at a fast food restaurant.
Maybe you spend it in the break room or the lunch room at your work.
Rub shoulders with people.
This is exactly what Jesus did.
He went from town to town and city to city to be with the people.
The second principle of our labor is that the labor harvests by cutting.
Cutting and Binding Souls00:04:17
He swings the scythe.
The scythe is sharp, it cuts the grain at the bottom.
The grain falls over, the grain dies.
Pluck the ear off, the ear of corn.
The word of God is a sharp blade, it cuts.
And as laborers in God's field, we also must cut.
We must present the gospel.
We must present mankind's sinfulness.
Your children who have heard true teaching must still, nevertheless, be reminded that they must repent and believe.
Your based neighbor who still has his Trump flag flying, if he is not a Christian, must hear that he must repent and believe.
That is the cut.
The cut is the call to repent.
The message of Christ is the message that we must die to be cut off from the life of the flesh and grafted onto the true vine that is Christ.
And this is the labor of those who work in the field.
And this is something that I really appreciate about the abolitionists.
While they are trying to get laws passed and while, in a sense, it's a political movement, they're also presenting the gospel, calling for repentance at every turn, personally and in the legislature.
They're cutting while they're working.
The third part of our labor, last.
The laborer, after he has gone into the field and cut the wheat, he binds up the individual pieces of grain or corn and he brings them into the storehouse.
The whole point of the harvest is to bring the ripe grain or corn or vegetables up to the barn.
It's no good to go out to cut the grain and then to just leave it there and go on vacation.
The grain will spoil even faster.
Instead, the reapers cut and then they bind the individual stalks into sheaves, into bushels.
Notice Jesus has compassion on the people, it says, because they are like sheep scattered without a shepherd.
One of the jobs of those who work in the field of souls is to take those scattered people, once they have been cut by the gospel, And bind them together.
And so the laborer, after cutting, binds them.
Listen to how Spurgeon describes this third duty of those who labor in the field of souls.
He said this when a laborer has only begun, oh, but then a laborer has only begun when he cuts the corn.
Much more is still wanted.
As he cuts, he let the corn fall into his arm, and then he lays it along in rows, but afterwards he binds it together.
And makes it into bundles that may be ingathered.
So the laborer whom God sends into the field must be a gathering laborer.
He must be one who brings God's people together, who comforts those that mourn and picks up from the earth those who were cut down by the sharp sickle of conviction.
He must bind the saints together, edifying them in their most holy faith.
Alas, how many have been scatterers, rending churches to pieces.
Pray ye the Lord of the harvest to give his church binders who can, by the power of the Holy Spirit, unite men's hearts.
Hearts.
I have a saying at home that I use with my kids.
It's the only dad saying that I have that I invented.
Most of the things that we say, we heard from other people, our fathers.
This one I get all the credit for.
It doesn't apply to everything, but it applies to pretty much everything around the house.
So, let's say this is a scenario.
We come home, we go in the house, and one of my kids says, Oh, all the lights are on.
Here's what I say probably a thousand times a week, not really.
Problems Best Solved by Seeing00:02:20
I say, hmm, problems are best solved by those who see them.
Problems are best solved by those who see them.
And in a sense, this is the message of Jesus here.
There are many around us who are ripe for the harvest.
They are like sheep without a shepherd, they are terrified, in danger of hell, and there's no one to tell them what to do.
And Jesus commands us to pray, but then, brothers and sisters, problems are solved by those who see them.
Somehow, in God's providence, while He does utterly govern over all of salvation and the salvation of all of His sheep, and will not lose a single one, there is also, from our point of view, the reality that when the harvest is ready, when it is full, there is limited time.
We must have a sense of urgency.
We must pray that the Lord would send out laborers.
This should be a regular prayer.
And as we pray this, we must realize that most likely God will want to send us out into the field.
So be on the lookout.
We live in a time of harvest, and we must prepare for a frenzy of hard work.
Let's pray.
Father, we are thankful that first you saw us in our need, you saw that we were enemies of you.
That we were far from you, that we are in a desperate situation, and you had compassion on us.
Lord, we didn't earn that, we didn't deserve it, but we're thankful for it.
Lord, we pray that you'd give us a similar compassion for the people around us, especially the ones who are those that you're working in.
Lord, we pray that you would send many laborers out into the harvest, some in small areas like just a neighbor or a neighborhood, some in large, even national arenas.
And Lord, then we pray that we are willing, that we would be willing to go out and do the work of the laborer in the field.
And this will be inconvenient and uncomfortable, and we pray that you'd give us strength to do it.