The NXR Podcast - THE SERMON - The Harvest Is Ready, Are We？

00:00:00.000 Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform.

00:00:03.800 I get it. It's annoying. Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.

00:00:07.540 When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm

00:00:12.040 so that our podcast shows up on more people's newsfeeds.

00:00:16.280 You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.

00:00:21.860 We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.

00:00:26.800 Good morning. Will you stand for me please for the reading of God's Word?

00:00:35.300 Our passage this morning is Matthew chapter 9 verses 35 through 38. While you're finding

00:00:42.760 that in your Bibles or pulling out your notes, I will just mention this passage, this series

00:00:50.180 of verses is the one that Charles Spurgeon said weighed the most heavily on his heart,

00:00:55.720 his entire life as a Christian. So brace yourselves.

00:01:03.400 The passage says this, and Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their

00:01:08.940 synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every

00:01:13.980 affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed

00:01:19.900 and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is

00:01:26.100 plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send

00:01:33.540 out laborers into his harvest. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

00:01:42.580 There is a renewed call, and I'm glad for it, among some of the Christians and conservative

00:01:49.580 people in our nation to make our children do hard things. There's even a renewed call to

00:01:56.220 challenge ourselves to do hard things. And in a lot of ways, because of modern convenience,

00:02:01.620 we've become a bit of a soft people. We have convenience and ease all around us. And the fact

00:02:09.700 that we have all of this ease means that we don't have to do the hard things that previous generations

00:02:14.620 did. Previously, if you didn't chop the wood, you froze in December. Previously, if you didn't

00:02:20.980 plant the crops, you starved in September. And yet that's not the world that we live in.

00:02:27.180 We can afford in our time to avoid doing hard things. Well, the good news in this passage

00:02:33.540 this morning is that it is a call to do hard things. It is a call to do hard work. And so my

00:02:42.600 prayer as we dive into this passage together is that the Holy Spirit would first of all convict

00:02:47.820 us and then enable us and equip us to do the work that he's calling us to do. So my main goal this

00:02:54.960 morning is to go through this brief passage twice. We're going to go through it very quickly and just

00:03:00.480 talk about what's there, and then we're going to circle back and we're going to talk about

00:03:04.400 what things are in there that we can pull out and apply to our time.

00:03:07.980 the passage here at the end of chapter 9 is a pivot point in the book of matthew the book of

00:03:16.640 matthew is a story it's an argument there are certain times when it pivots and changes directions

00:03:21.540 and this is one of them it caps the end of a long section that began in chapter 4 we see a very

00:03:28.460 similar verse to the one that we read here in chapter 9 35 in matthew 4 23 where matthew said

00:03:36.820 and he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of

00:03:41.520 the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. Very similar to what

00:03:47.340 we just saw just now. So Matthew started this section and he's ending this section, describing

00:03:52.540 what happened in this section. Chapters 5 through 7 were the Sermon on the Mount, where Matthew

00:03:57.660 gives an example of the kind of teaching and preaching that Jesus was doing in the region of

00:04:02.800 the Galilee. And then chapters eight and nine show primarily how Jesus accompanied his preaching of

00:04:08.960 the gospel with healings and casting out demons. And during this whole sections, Matthew five

00:04:16.560 through nine, Jesus has been doing two primary things. First, he himself has been preaching the

00:04:23.940 gospel of the kingdom. He's been doing the work of ministry. He's been going throughout all the

00:04:28.760 Galilee and doing it himself. Second though, and though the disciples don't realize it, what he's

00:04:35.160 been doing is he's been training the disciples to eventually overtake his mission. In chapter 10,

00:04:42.560 the very next chapter, the next thing that we're going to see is that Jesus takes these 12 disciples

00:04:47.800 and he sends them out to do the exact same kind of work that he's been doing that Matthew recorded

00:04:53.660 in chapters 5 through 9. And the book of Matthew just continues to expand outward until we get to

00:05:00.320 the end, which we know the Great Commission at the end, where Jesus commissions the church,

00:05:05.160 believers in the church, to now take the mission and the message of God out into all the world.

00:05:11.200 So that's how Matthew starts. It's Christ doing the work, commissioning 12, and gets bigger and

00:05:16.680 bigger and bigger. From chapter 4 on until where we've been today, and even the next couple of

00:05:22.900 chapters, Jesus has been going around the region where he grew up. This is his backyard. The Galilee

00:05:29.740 is. He grew up in the town of Nazareth. Galilee was on the northwest of the Red Sea. Nazareth was a

00:05:35.880 small town. Estimates say maybe 400 people in the town. The whole region of the Galilee was about 30

00:05:42.800 miles across. So back then people walked most places. You could walk across the whole place in

00:05:48.620 about two days pretty easily. By the way, just to give a little perspective, a lot of the towns in

00:05:55.300 Texas, as Texas was developing, they made mail stops about 30 miles apart because that was about

00:06:02.100 how far you could responsibly ride a horse in a day. And around those little mail stops, little

00:06:07.920 towns grew up. And so if you happen to look at a map sometime, a lot, not all, but a lot of

00:06:12.540 towns in texas are about 30 miles apart that's about the region that the galilee occupied about

00:06:19.240 a 30 mile radius or diameter actually not radius well what has jesus been doing this whole time

00:06:26.700 around the galilee verse 35 tells us it says he was preaching in the synagogues he was teaching

00:06:32.980 and he was healing their diseases and afflictions okay so he's going all throughout the region it's

00:06:39.840 a region he would have known well. He grew up there. He's going to the towns. He's going to

00:06:44.500 the cities. Like I said, this was not a huge area, but it did have a lot of small towns and even

00:06:49.680 some small cities. The towns were maybe a couple hundred to a thousand. Some of the cities may

00:06:55.020 have been 10,000 to 15,000 people. Now, it's important to note that because of its proximity

00:07:01.180 to the Lake of Galilee, because of the weather, because of the soil in the area, while the people

00:07:06.800 in the Galilee region were not super wealthy. They were not poor. They were middle class. It

00:07:13.640 was pretty easy with the farming in the lake or as a tradesman to support a family in this area.

00:07:19.600 The problem that they have that we're going to see in this passage was not really a financial

00:07:24.340 one. They weren't the homeless and the beggars and the poor and the outcasts.

00:07:30.480 And Jesus goes through this kind of normal area, preaching and teaching.

00:07:36.800 That's point A. He was preaching and teaching and healing.

00:07:39.440 Notice what Jesus does.

00:07:40.980 He goes to the people wherever they are.

00:07:44.880 He is no respecter of persons.

00:07:48.120 He goes to the cities. Yes, it says the cities.

00:07:50.560 But he also goes to the towns and to the villages.

00:07:53.160 And he teaches and preaches in their synagogues

00:07:56.740 where men were already gathered who wanted the truth,

00:08:00.700 who wanted to try to worship God properly.

00:08:03.640 and he heals their diseases and afflictions so the pattern here is interesting he would start

00:08:11.420 out and we see this pattern by the way replicated by the apostles in the book of acts he would go

00:08:17.040 to a town he would go to a synagogue he would preach there logical that's where people are

00:08:21.360 trying to worship god he would heal people he would cast out demons and then often what he

00:08:28.320 would do is he would leave the towns for a little while. Now, this was a very strategic move on

00:08:33.800 Jesus' part, and it really gives a lot of insight into understanding the chapter or the passage for

00:08:39.840 today. It's likely that there were large crowds following Jesus, and so leaving these small towns

00:08:46.280 was strategic on one hand. The towns probably couldn't support these thousands and thousands

00:08:50.860 of people that were following Jesus around the Galilee, but there's a second strategic thing

00:08:55.800 going on here. When Jesus would preach in the synagogues and in the towns and then leave,

00:09:04.440 many people would follow him out into the inconvenient wilderness or into the mountain

00:09:09.200 or into the countryside. And this forced a level of commitment for those who were interested in

00:09:16.080 what he was saying. The crowds followed him once they heard what he said and saw what he did.

00:09:21.960 And this indicated to Jesus an attitude that at least there is interest on their part.

00:09:29.040 They're coming out.

00:09:29.880 They're inconveniencing themselves.

00:09:31.340 They're leaving behind their daily routine to hear what I have to say and see what I'm doing.

00:09:37.820 And that attitude is incredibly important.

00:09:40.700 It indicates to Jesus where God is working in the region, whose hearts the Holy Spirit might be stirring.

00:09:48.900 drink this is because in spite of their relative material security they the people of the galilee

00:09:59.220 had a deep spiritual problem when christ looked at the crowds that were gathering around him

00:10:06.680 and had come out of the town to be with him he had compassion on them not for their financial

00:10:15.080 situation not because they were all homeless and second-class citizens they had things together

00:10:22.040 actually they looked probably fine on the outside people would have liked to live in the galilee

00:10:28.440 but really when it came to their deepest needs their internal needs here they were as bankrupt

00:10:34.520 as bankrupt could be they had no hope spiritually and the thing is and this is what's so key

00:10:41.720 Some of them were beginning to realize this.

00:10:45.540 Listen to how John Gill describes this.

00:10:48.960 He describes the state of the people in the Galilee.

00:10:51.540 He says, no due care was taken of them to gather and keep them together, to feed them

00:10:57.480 with wholesome doctrine.

00:10:59.480 But they were as objects, as outcasts that no man regarded and in great danger of the

00:11:04.960 loss and ruin of their immortal souls.

00:11:07.220 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.

00:11:19.100 This is very important because what Jesus recognizes is a spiritual condition, not just a physical one.

00:11:27.780 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.

00:11:35.040 And I'm in no way trying to undermine or downplay the reality that God is sovereign in all of salvation.

00:11:41.700 Every single person whom the Father calls, Christ will receive.

00:11:46.420 But from our perspective, when we're saying who is ready to hear, who is ready,

00:11:51.420 we look for who the Holy Spirit is doing a work in.

00:11:55.060 And often that work is people becoming aware that they need something,

00:11:58.640 that they're desperate in a spiritual sense.

00:12:00.820 And so when I say that through the sermon, that's the context that I'm saying that with.

00:12:05.040 many followed him from city to city, town to town, inconveniencing themselves spending days

00:12:12.960 or weeks away from their family. And it's because they were helpless and lost and they knew it.

00:12:20.000 And for this reason, Christ had compassion on them. And so that's point B, Christ demonstrates

00:12:26.760 compassion. It's interesting in this story that Jesus does not have compassion on all of the

00:12:33.220 people that he encounters, not this kind of compassion. Rather, it says that he has this

00:12:39.440 great compassion on the crowds who came to him, who hungered and thirsted, in a sense,

00:12:45.260 for righteousness and for true teaching and true religion. In fact, in chapter 11, just a few pages

00:12:52.080 over, Jesus is going to pronounce woes on the cities that he's visiting here. He pronounces

00:12:58.960 judgment on woe on some, but has great compassion on a select group of others. And it's those who

00:13:07.260 were scattered and helpless. And so in the face of these people who are lost and spiritually

00:13:15.280 bankrupt, Christ has compassion. And because of that compassion for them, he's not just ambivalent.

00:13:22.340 He's not just kind of this supercomputer brain who's just running calculations. He has a

00:13:27.780 compassionate reaction to them, and he makes an observation to his disciples, and he gives them a

00:13:33.920 command. His observation is that the harvest is ready. It's full. Now, this harvest obviously is

00:13:45.440 spiritual. He's talking about souls who are ready, in a sense, to be brought in to hear the gospel

00:13:50.600 and to respond. How does he know that the harvest is ready? Well, obviously he's God, but at the

00:13:56.820 same time, he's training his disciples who are not God. And so I think there are some clues. Number

00:14:01.720 one, for the last couple of chapters, we've seen unexpected people coming to faith in Christ, a

00:14:08.160 centurion, a religious leader, a woman who was unclean and an outcast. So when we see unexpected

00:14:15.260 people coming to Christ, that's a sign that the fields are ripe. Second, there were people on the

00:14:22.300 fringes. There are always people on the fringes in every society, but there are people on the

00:14:27.080 fringes who were hungry for truth and for true preaching. And third, this is really important,

00:14:36.420 there was a lack of true spiritual leadership. In good times, there's good spiritual leadership,

00:14:42.340 and so one by one, a person grows up in a Christian family, the Lord works in his or her

00:14:47.700 heart and boom there's a father a mother a pastor but in this case in the galilee there were people

00:14:53.560 who were awakening to their spiritual condition and there was no spiritual leadership to guide

00:14:58.740 them does that sound like our time that is when god is preparing a harvest and the thing about a

00:15:07.740 harvest is when it's ready when it's harvest time it has to be brought in right away or the harvest

00:15:16.120 will spoil. I'm sure you all have seen this driving around. We drive past many, many farms

00:15:24.120 and fields. And in the fall, all summer, we watch the grain get taller and more golden and the heads

00:15:30.120 of grain more full. We watch the corn. Sometimes it's like one day to the next, it's taller. You

00:15:35.000 drive past a place and you could see around that corner before. And now you can't see around the

00:15:39.320 corner because the corn has gotten taller. And you've all probably had this where you're driving

00:15:44.040 by one day and the field is full and lush and ready and then two days later you drive by and

00:15:49.140 there's just an empty field because when the harvest is ready it's all hands on deck you bring

00:15:54.920 it in as quickly as possible and jesus sees the situation with the people of the gala and he says

00:16:03.960 to his disciples behold the harvest is at hand the harvest is the souls of these people in whom

00:16:11.380 the Holy Spirit was working to create a desire to worship and a hunger for spiritual food.

00:16:17.280 And apparently there were many of them. This is another reason why Jesus is so compassionate.

00:16:21.920 It's many. The text says that the harvest was plentiful. And yet, in spite of the fact

00:16:28.520 that the harvest is plentiful, it's a lot and it's ready right now, there was no one ready for it.

00:16:36.860 there were no workers to go out into the field john the baptist was in prison jesus at this

00:16:43.740 point was literally the only one doing this work in other words the harvest is on the verge of

00:16:50.500 spoiling even as the corn and the wheat and the fruit is on the vine and on the stock

00:16:56.220 and so in response to this he gives his disciples a command

00:17:00.240 this is point c he teaches how god works the command is to pray that god would send laborers

00:17:09.420 out into the field god arranges circumstances providentially so that while he is indeed

00:17:17.740 sovereign over salvation he often orchestrates events and means that will prepare people to

00:17:24.340 hear the gospel now there's a chapter break here you see that big number 10 right below this and

00:17:30.240 we have to remember that the chapter breaks were not present in the original and so we might be

00:17:36.480 tempted to miss the point that while jesus does command his disciples to pray earnestly that god

00:17:43.400 would send laborers out in the harvest the very next thing that matthew writes is that jesus

00:17:48.140 gathers the 12, and then in verse 5, he sends them out. It's like he says, okay, guys, pray that God

00:17:55.140 would send laborers out into that harvest. Let's gather around. Everyone gather around. Let's pray.

00:18:00.020 Matthew, you pray. Mark, you pray. Okay, we've all prayed. Okay, guess what? God just answered the

00:18:05.080 prayer. You guys are those workers, right? We can't miss that. We can't separate the command to pray

00:18:12.480 from the likelihood, or not the likelihood, from the fact that God was about to send them out as

00:18:17.660 the answer to that prayer. So that's the text. Well, what does this mean for us now? I want to

00:18:27.500 pull out, I think, four applications. First of all, the condition of the field at that time and the

00:18:33.500 condition of the field in our time. Notice that the right field is not simply the people who have

00:18:42.380 been forgotten and are on the fringes. There are many people who are on the fringes and have been

00:18:49.120 many people on the fringes, forgotten, downtrodden, etc. throughout history who have no desire or

00:18:56.460 softness for Christ. But often it's those people who are forgotten and who God puts in them a

00:19:04.060 desire for truth that are the ripe harvest. Spurgeon has a warning for the people in his

00:19:11.440 time and for us as well. I think it's in your notes there. He said this, Jesus did not go about

00:19:17.200 among the masses with an undiscerning admiration of them. I do not hear him praising them as quote

00:19:25.460 the finest peasantry or quote the sinew of the nation as some will do, but neither. So he didn't

00:19:31.760 just say because you're poor, you're the best, but neither do we see in him any trace of aversion to

00:19:37.780 them, as though he felt out of place in their society. He was often saddened by their follies

00:19:43.140 and grieved by their sins, but he never loathed them or spoke contemptuously of them. This is

00:19:50.080 where the social justice crowd went wrong. They think that simply because someone is oppressed

00:19:57.480 or poor or marginalized or forgotten or downtrodden, that this means that they are somehow more

00:20:04.800 virtuous than the rest of all people. They're closer or even in the kingdom of God. That's

00:20:11.000 what the kingdom of God is all about. The forgotten masses are not inherently good or 0.98

00:20:17.520 virtuous just by being forgotten. Many times in history, the poor have actually maintained 0.94

00:20:24.500 hard hearts. Two quick examples. When John Wycliffe and his team were trying to translate

00:20:29.860 the Bible into English, often it was the poor peasants that they were living and working among

00:20:35.920 that were turning them in to the leaders in the area. Something similar happened with the

00:20:41.780 Protestant Huguenots in Catholic France, where it was the poor people that rejected,

00:20:48.600 while the rich people converted to Protestantism. And so it's not just that you're poor or

00:20:55.060 marginalized that makes you ripe for the harvest. And yet there's another application here that we

00:21:02.060 need to be careful of. It has been noted that many of the young men on the fringe, the young people

00:21:09.440 on the fringe of our society, are those who are ripe for the harvest now. And I don't disagree

00:21:15.640 with this at all. We do see a lot of signs. We see young men especially turning to any form of

00:21:22.520 teaching that they can unfortunately many to eastern orthodox or roman catholicism or maybe

00:21:28.240 they're just red pilling getting into the manosphere but the fact that they have been

00:21:33.080 overlooked by the evangelical elites by the cultural elites the people in washington dc

00:21:37.560 does not inherently make them the ones who are ripe for harvest even the fact that many of them

00:21:46.300 are red pilling does not necessarily mean that jesus teaches that those who are ripe for the

00:21:51.900 harvest are those who have an awareness of a need, but thirst for righteousness, thirst for truth.

00:22:05.780 And on top of that, they are those who have no one to tell the truth to them. This is indeed the

00:22:11.680 case. As I said, many of the younger generation are turning to orthodoxy Roman Catholicism,

00:22:17.100 but remember, the harvest is reaped only among those who will repent of their sin and turn to

00:22:24.960 Christ. We are in a cultural moment where many of our battles blur together. We welcome co-belligerents

00:22:34.000 who are not necessarily Christians in our cultural and political battles, but the harvest

00:22:38.140 in this passage that Jesus is talking about are the people who are called from death to life.

00:22:44.440 it's among those in whom god has placed sovereignly a hunger for the truth and who

00:22:51.440 upon hearing their sins preached repent and believe in christ

00:22:56.760 red pilling is not necessarily the same as hungering and thirsting for righteousness

00:23:02.900 it may be a sign that people are looking for the truth but the true test is then when we

00:23:10.940 do present jesus and preach christ crucified and preach about their sin then we see whether the

00:23:17.680 holy spirit has been working in their hearts to give them faith and that is why we must remember

00:23:23.760 that the primary work that god god has called us to do is not merely although it is important

00:23:29.700 to gather like-minded people in a political cause or a cultural cause it's not enough to simply

00:23:37.740 gather your family together and give them a strong sense of family identity. It's not enough to

00:23:43.900 simply teach your children the right way to think about the world, the right way to think about

00:23:50.400 social issues. Jesus saw evidence that many in the crowds who came out to him wanted truth and

00:23:58.560 were desperate for the gospel. They wanted to know and worship God, and so he preached to them to see

00:24:05.320 who would repent. And those are the people, those are the people on whom he had compassion.

00:24:11.880 If God is calling someone to himself, what that person needs in all of his searching or

00:24:18.480 uncertainties or despairing even, what that person needs is to be fed with truth from the word of God.

00:24:27.200 He needs to lead, he needs to be led to Jesus and confronted with this sin. Sheep are stupid. 1.00

00:24:33.620 even with the shepherd they are likely to wander off to get injured but without a shepherd as these 1.00

00:24:40.680 in the passage and as many around us who are waking up but still have no shepherd they are doomed

00:24:48.600 there are many around us in this situation there are many women who are discovering their

00:24:55.860 spirituality on instagram or on tiktok from social media there are many men who legitimately hunger

00:25:02.720 for truth but are looking in the wrong places especially turning to anyone who will say

00:25:08.900 something that's controversial but there is only one truth that saves and unless these people who

00:25:16.520 are waking up hear about jesus they will all follow a false voice it's actually almost worse

00:25:23.300 you get woken up you realize that you have a need but no one gives you the truth and so you follow

00:25:29.100 even worse paths. You follow the path to some cunning wolf. You follow a path that goes over

00:25:36.120 a cliff. You see, before Jesus sent his laborers out into the harvest, even the people in the

00:25:44.900 crowds who were coming out to hear his teaching, who were spiritually hungry, who were alert to

00:25:51.620 the situation around them. They were still spiritually doomed until they repented. In the

00:25:59.020 same way, the red-pilled without Christ are doomed. The trad wives without Christ are doomed. There may 0.99

00:26:05.080 be an interest, and that could be a sign that the harvest among them is ripe, and I think it is,

00:26:09.740 but because they are sheep without a shepherd, they will run to all sorts of false promises

00:26:15.200 to try to satisfy that interest.

00:26:19.540 They may sense that something is wrong,

00:26:22.060 but if they are not introduced to Christ,

00:26:25.160 they will have no means to fix that problem.

00:26:28.240 And so, like a child who is very thirsty and goes into the kitchen

00:26:32.380 but can't reach the water, he has a legitimate thirst,

00:26:36.520 but he just grabs something from under the sink.

00:26:38.740 It's the dish soap, it's the vinegar, it's the bleach.

00:26:41.720 The thirst was legitimate, but what he drank was not going to cure his thirst.

00:26:48.520 Many people who wake up and are thirsty for Christ will inevitably end up drinking something that will kill them.

00:26:58.760 And that's why Christ had compassion on them.

00:27:01.300 They were in a desperate state.

00:27:02.920 They wanted more, but no one could give it to them.

00:27:07.060 And so let's look at the attitude of Christ here, the compassion that he had.

00:27:11.720 This is point B of section two.

00:27:15.580 It says, it is not their economic condition that alerts Christ, that calls his compassion.

00:27:20.580 It is not the fact that they were being taken advantage of financially as Galilee was somewhat prosperous.

00:27:26.340 No, it was the fact that no one was tending to their spiritual lives.

00:27:31.140 No one was feeding them, preaching repentance to them, or healing them.

00:27:34.940 In the same way, we, Christians, are to have great compassion, not simply on the needy, although we should,

00:27:41.720 but on those who desire truth but have no one to give it to them this is a work of god

00:27:47.240 as i said jesus great concern here is for the sheep who have no shepherd now what does this

00:27:55.780 mean they have no shepherd i think there are two senses here first no one was introducing them to

00:28:03.180 the true shepherd that is christ the teachings of the old testament were supposed to point forward

00:28:10.040 to Christ, so that when he came, the people would recognize him as the true shepherd,

00:28:15.660 the true leader, the true provider for their needs, and would rejoice.

00:28:21.840 But the true shepherd had been hidden from them. In our time also, many things try to hide Christ,

00:28:30.900 the good shepherd, from the people around us. Many voices seek to drown out the voice of the

00:28:37.260 great shepherd. In fact, I think we live in one of the noisiest times in history where a million

00:28:43.160 false messiahs and false promises call out for everyone's attention. Unbelief is always a problem

00:28:50.620 that only God can cure, but the amount of voices and noise calling to the people in our time

00:28:57.480 is much greater, I think, even than in that time. And if Christ had compassion on them because no

00:29:04.560 one would give them the truth, how much more are we to have compassion on the people around us

00:29:10.380 to whom no one will give the truth? We have come to the point now where no one trusts anything.

00:29:18.520 Even as Christians, with Christ as our anchor, we don't know who to trust. And I think that

00:29:24.740 this can sometimes tempt us even to doubt our own doctrine and our own faith.

00:29:29.240 and if that's a temptation for us imagine the whirlwind and tornado and the noise

00:29:37.140 that unbelievers live in they can't hear the truth 0.93

00:29:41.120 the world is a deafening roar on the one hand there's the train that's plowing through like 1.00

00:29:50.460 in a small town in the middle of the night wakes everybody up saying nothing is reliable

00:29:55.160 nihilism is the only answer and in response to that a million charlatans rise up and say i know

00:30:02.900 you don't trust anyone trust me i have the answers listen to me and follow me and so

00:30:09.260 though jesus promises and this is true in john 10 that his sheep will hear his voice

00:30:15.440 we see that many currently are incapable of hearing it because of all the noise around them

00:30:23.240 Not because they're unwilling and not because the spirit is not able,

00:30:26.580 but because the background noise is deafening.

00:30:30.300 But there's a second sense where Jesus has compassion on them

00:30:34.480 because they have no shepherd.

00:30:37.080 In 1 Peter 5, Peter refers to Christ as the chief shepherd,

00:30:41.040 but also to the fact that God has appointed human shepherds as well.

00:30:45.680 And so as Jesus looks out over these crowds of people who long to hear the truth,

00:30:49.720 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.

00:31:00.100 They are completely on their own, stumbling down any path to who knows what disaster.

00:31:08.540 People need shepherds.

00:31:10.640 Sheep need shepherds who will watch over their souls, who will lead them to Jesus, who will bind their wounds.

00:31:16.960 and a majority of the people around us do not it's not only that they don't have a shepherd

00:31:22.540 it's that they don't know that they need one and yet as jesus said though there are many who have

00:31:30.020 a desire to at least hear the truth though the harvest may be ready there are very few workers

00:31:35.740 there are very few shepherds there are very few pastors there are very few evangelists there are

00:31:41.460 Very few Christians who know Jesus and who are also willing to go out into the fields to tell people about him. 0.65

00:31:48.880 And notice, this is a fault of the people. 0.84

00:31:53.360 God had prepared the harvest by creating restlessness inside of these people in the Galilee.

00:32:00.940 But according to Jesus, part of the terrible condition of these people is that not only were they lost,

00:32:09.740 not only did they have no shepherd not only were false shepherds preaching at them but there was

00:32:15.400 no one available to go out and fix that problem so not only are they helpless to find relief for

00:32:23.160 uncertainties but there is no one who go go out and offer them that relief and for this reason

00:32:28.820 also jesus has compassion and brothers and sisters so should we we forget if you've been a christian

00:32:34.540 for a long time. You forget the terror of living in uncertainty without the rock of Christ underneath

00:32:41.980 your feet. This compassion that Christ felt, we should feel it also in a mighty, moving, motivating

00:32:50.780 way. Listen to how Spurgeon describes this compassion that Jesus had. He says, our Savior

00:32:57.660 looked upon the people among whom he moved in a manner worthy of our imitation. He was a man of

00:33:04.100 great feeling, and he was, quote, moved with compassion. As the Greek word has it, his bowels

00:33:10.780 yearned. His sympathies were awakened. He could not look upon a mass of men with an indifferent

00:33:17.020 countenance. His inmost soul was stirred. But at the same time, he was no mere enthusiast.

00:33:24.140 He was as calmly practical as if he had been a cool calculator. If he sighed, he did something

00:33:31.320 more than sigh he proceeded to aid those whom he pitied and in order to render that aid to the

00:33:38.960 people in that area he commanded there are many for this is point c there are many who hunger for

00:33:46.280 truth but have no one to give it to them and because we following christ's example have

00:33:53.460 compassion on those people around us the first thing that we are commanded to do is to pray that

00:33:58.900 The Lord of the harvest would send workers out so that the harvest does not spoil.

00:34:03.640 I love this title for God.

00:34:06.120 God is the Lord of the harvest.

00:34:08.360 It is his harvest.

00:34:11.460 And we're commanded to have compassion on the people who are out in the harvest.

00:34:16.180 Compassion is dangerous.

00:34:20.060 It's dangerous because, number one, to feel compassion is uncomfortable.

00:34:24.160 and number two when we feel true compassion it usually leads us to do something even more

00:34:30.960 uncomfortable render aid and assistance to inconvenience ourselves compassion is the

00:34:37.800 feeling of one who sees that someone is in a bad situation and desires to do something to alleviate

00:34:43.960 it but we are indeed to learn from our lord and to feel compassion for the lost around us

00:34:51.000 What should we do in response to this compassion?

00:34:55.640 Well, here the Lord is very kind to us, for he gives us a great and mighty and noble task,

00:35:02.240 but also one that at the same time is simple.

00:35:06.660 Jesus tells his disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest,

00:35:11.020 that he would send workers out into the harvest,

00:35:14.860 that the harvest may in fact be fruitful rather than lost.

00:35:20.080 this might seem like a small thing.

00:35:23.880 Yeah, yeah, pray. Good.

00:35:25.360 What do we do?

00:35:26.700 No, don't move on yet.

00:35:29.020 This is no small thing.

00:35:31.040 And it ought always to be a discipline of Christians in every age,

00:35:34.840 but especially in times of turmoil.

00:35:38.860 We are told to pray,

00:35:41.320 Our Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name.

00:35:43.860 Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

00:35:46.960 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.

00:35:54.920 How do those two things happen?

00:35:57.640 Do you know how they happen?

00:35:59.200 This prayer here in our text, we pray that the Lord would send workers into the harvest to do the work.

00:36:12.980 The situation at the time seemed desperate.

00:36:16.960 There were no shepherds at all for the people, not a single person to go out and reap the harvest.

00:36:21.800 The situation is equally dire now.

00:36:25.120 It seems that many in our time and in our land are falling through the cracks

00:36:28.960 with no hope of someone to catch them with the message of the gospel before they perish.

00:36:34.800 And in these situations, it's good to hear what Matthew Henry wrote about this verse.

00:36:40.600 This also is in your notes.

00:36:42.040 He said this, what was their duty in this case, the duty of the disciples?

00:36:46.960 pray ye therefore the lord of the harvest note he says the melancholy or the sad aspect of the times

00:36:55.020 and the deplorable state of precious souls should much excite and quicken our prayer

00:37:02.880 when we see the condition of the people around us we should be greatly excited and motivated to much

00:37:11.120 prayer when things look discouraging we should pray more and then we should complain and fear

00:37:18.240 less and we should adopt adapt our prayers to the present exigencies that's the needs

00:37:23.380 the present needs of the church such such an understanding we ought to have of the times

00:37:28.960 as to know not only what israel ought to do does a turn of phrase here but what israel ought to pray

00:37:35.800 for. Notice in this prayer that Jesus commands something incredible. God is the one working in

00:37:44.900 the hearts of the people. He is the one drawing them to himself. He is working on the heart of

00:37:50.980 possibly your children, your co-workers, people in our nation and in our state.

00:37:57.460 He is working in their hearts so that they see that there is something wrong and they desire

00:38:03.320 something true and good and right. That is what God is doing. And yet, Jesus says this,

00:38:11.220 if the laborers do not go out into the fields, those souls will be lost. Again, I absolutely

00:38:20.800 affirm the doctrines of grace and the doctrines of election that everyone who's predestined will be

00:38:27.060 saved and sanctified, but listen, listen to how Jesus says it. Pray that the Lord of the harvest

00:38:36.840 would send out workers into the field. Spurgeon gives a long quote here, and I'm going to read

00:38:42.320 the whole thing, and he illustrates how this looks from our human temporal perspective.

00:38:48.780 He, Jesus, did not say, he didn't look out there and see the situation, he did not say the harvest

00:38:55.460 truly is plenteous and the laborers are few, but that matters not. God can bless a few and make

00:39:02.500 them accomplish as much as many. He believed in his father's omnipotence, but he also believed

00:39:09.720 that the Lord would work by means and that many laborers were required to gather in a plenteous

00:39:17.180 harvest. And therefore he told the disciples to pray for them. He believed in the results being

00:39:23.540 proportionate to the means used and he therefore bade us go to the root of the matter practically

00:39:30.320 on the other hand neither did our lord say the laborers are few therefore pray that god would

00:39:36.540 do the work he can do it alone and he has no need of man you think too much of men your one man

00:39:43.880 ministry ought to be put away no jesus did not talk so we do not see any trace of such sentiments

00:39:50.860 in our Savior's teaching.

00:39:52.340 Our master never made too much of men,

00:39:55.220 but he made a very great deal of men

00:39:57.720 anointed of the Spirit and sent to preach.

00:40:00.160 In fact, he taught us to pray for them.

00:40:04.420 It is true that God is not served by human hands

00:40:07.800 as though he needed anything.

00:40:11.000 But he has chosen to spread the call,

00:40:13.980 the message of the gospel, 0.83

00:40:15.080 primarily through human laborers. 0.67

00:40:18.440 And because of this,

00:40:19.460 when there is a shortage of labor,

00:40:22.960 when the harvest is full,

00:40:26.760 Christ instructs us to pray earnestly

00:40:29.260 that God would send out faithful workers,

00:40:33.040 many faithful workers.

00:40:35.700 This ought to be our prayer as well.

00:40:38.860 We ought to pray that in our land

00:40:40.900 and in our towns and in our families

00:40:42.880 and in our jobs and in our neighborhoods, 0.94

00:40:46.280 God would send laborers out

00:40:48.400 to do the work of bringing in the harvest.

00:40:51.740 But remember what I said before.

00:40:54.760 Jesus instructed them to pray

00:40:56.380 and then immediately answered that prayer

00:40:59.460 by sending them out.

00:41:04.760 In the same way as we pray for laborers,

00:41:07.500 it is quite likely that God also expects us

00:41:11.140 to go into the field and participate in this harvest.

00:41:14.300 you may have noticed that i've been referring to our role in the harvest and you may wonder if

00:41:22.720 that's proper given the nature of the text doesn't this passage speak of shepherds the needs of

00:41:28.780 pastors and evangelists which are gifts and roles given to the church it is certainly true there's

00:41:34.500 a special sense where god is saying pray for those who can actually lead new churches be evangelists

00:41:41.880 dedicated to the work of the evangelist. Furthermore, you may object to what I'm saying

00:41:47.620 here if you notice that Matthew 10 6 gives us the scope of the field that Jesus was sending

00:41:54.720 the disciples out into and says that he was sending them to the lost sheep of Israel.

00:42:00.760 Not to go to the Samaritans, not to go to the Gentiles. Why then do I apply this passage to us 0.73

00:42:08.180 now, all of us? Well, first of all, because this image of the harvest being ripe is one that Jesus

00:42:15.940 uses multiple times in the Gospels, and in particular in John 4, when he's dealing with

00:42:22.180 the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well, who's now outside of the scope that he gave to the

00:42:28.380 disciples originally. He says this, my food is to do the will of him who sent me to accomplish his

00:42:34.240 work. Do you not say there are yet four months? Then comes the harvest. Look, I tell you, lift

00:42:39.960 up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. And then the next couple of verses

00:42:44.640 show how the great number of people in Samaria believed in Christ. Second, the apostles took

00:42:52.080 the instructions that we see in Matthew 10. Matthew 10 is the instructions that Jesus gives to them

00:42:58.300 of how to go out and carry out the mission of preaching the gospel. Well, the disciples do it

00:43:04.020 in Matthew 10. And then when you look in Acts, the apostles, as they go to Gentile towns and Jewish 0.97

00:43:10.320 towns, they do the exact same thing. They shake the dust off their feet. They go to the synagogues 0.98

00:43:16.280 first. So they saw this model of the harvest being ripe as what they were going to continue to 0.98

00:43:23.320 carry out in the gospel age. And third, there's the famous passage in 1 Corinthians 3, where Paul

00:43:29.660 lays out the mechanics of how this works. One plants, another waters, but God causes it to grow.

00:43:37.040 So while it's true that Jesus was sending these disciples in that context to that specific

00:43:42.940 region of Israel, this paradigm of looking for ripe fields, of praying for laborers,

00:43:48.840 and then of God's people going out into those fields has endured throughout the entire church

00:43:54.440 age to this very day. So there is a sense where all of us at some point will work in God's field

00:44:02.800 to bring in the harvest. Now, it may be to a lesser degree or a greater degree, depending on

00:44:09.140 your station in life, or if you have a lot of little kids running around your house,

00:44:14.300 what your job is, etc. But whether either with a broad or a narrow focus, all of us are to be

00:44:20.900 involved in this. Because of that, what I want to do to close is I want to look at the last section

00:44:27.560 and see three important characteristics of what gospel labor looks like, and these will be quite

00:44:33.280 brief. Just to be honest, I'm stealing these from Spurgeon. I think they're really helpful, though,

00:44:40.420 to us. If at some point we are all going to be labors in the field of souls, it's important to

00:44:46.700 know what that labor looks like. Okay, so this is point D. The laborer must first go into the field.

00:44:53.220 Second, he must cut. Third, he must gather and bind up the sheaves. First of all, notice something

00:44:59.460 really, really important. The work is in the field. The work is in the field.

00:45:10.100 it is all well and good to sit in a cottage up on a hill and look down on the farm the sunset going

00:45:18.360 down casting its rays across the full ripe drain acres and acres of it and to sit down and say ah

00:45:25.880 what a beautiful sight in this field in this parable the owner of the field sends the workers

00:45:33.660 out into the field. That is to say, we are supposed to be among the people to discern

00:45:40.980 who is right, who is receptive, and in whom is the Holy Spirit working and moving. This means

00:45:49.500 that to some degree, you have to be around people who are not Christians. This will be easier for 1.00

00:45:55.300 some of you. Maybe you have a job that has a lot of conversation or a lot of freedom to just kind

00:45:59.980 of you know talk to people in your office but if you stay at home as a mom or you work remotely

00:46:06.740 this could be a little bit more difficult but the principle here is the labor is out in the field

00:46:13.620 that's where the lord of the harvest sends his workers obviously our children until they are

00:46:19.400 converted are part of this field i'm not sure they're quite the same here because they're not

00:46:24.640 in a sense scattered with no shepherd, but they are a legitimate part of your gospel work, parents.

00:46:31.900 No, the labor that we would perform in this passage, we perform them for the Lord of the

00:46:36.780 harvest is out among the people. So here are some ideas. Maybe you could try to go to the park with

00:46:43.120 some women in your neighborhood and their kids. Maybe you could join a group of men who share a

00:46:47.820 hobby that you have. Maybe you spend your lunch break instead of in your office or in your cubicle

00:46:52.860 or at a fast food restaurant,

00:46:55.960 maybe you spend it in the break room

00:46:57.440 or the lunch room at your work.

00:46:59.640 Rub shoulders with people.

00:47:02.020 This is exactly what Jesus did.

00:47:03.780 He went from town to town and city to city

00:47:07.080 to be with the people.

00:47:09.200 The second principle of our labor

00:47:11.040 is that the labor harvests by cutting.

00:47:16.780 He swings the scythe.

00:47:18.800 The scythe is sharp.

00:47:20.520 It cuts the grain at the bottom.

00:47:22.200 the grain falls over, the grain dies. Pluck the ear off, the ear of corn.

00:47:30.680 The word of God is a sharp blade. It cuts. And as laborers in God's field, we also must cut.

00:47:39.580 We must present the gospel. We must present mankind's sinfulness. Your children who have

00:47:46.720 heard true teaching, must still nevertheless be reminded that they must repent and believe.

00:47:54.020 Your based neighbor who still has his trump flag flying, if he is not a Christian, must hear 0.55

00:48:01.100 that he must repent and believe. That is the cut. The cut is the call to repent. The message of 0.94

00:48:10.820 Christ is the message that we must die to be cut off from the life of the flesh and grafted onto

00:48:18.960 the true vine that is Christ. And this is the labor of those who work in the field. And this 0.84

00:48:24.380 is something that I really appreciate about the abolitionists. While they are trying to get laws

00:48:29.320 passed, and while in a sense it's a political movement, they're also presenting the gospel,

00:48:34.200 calling for repentance at every turn, personally and in the legislature. They're cutting while

00:48:40.580 they're working. The third part of our labor, last. The laborer, after he has gone into the field

00:48:49.180 and cut the wheat, he binds up the individual pieces of grain or corn, and he brings them

00:48:57.280 into the storehouse. The whole point of the harvest is to bring the ripe grain or corn or

00:49:05.060 vegetables up to the barn. It's no good to go out to cut the grain and then to just leave it there

00:49:13.380 and go on vacation. The grain will spoil even faster. Instead, the reapers cut and then they

00:49:22.500 bind the individual stocks into sheaves, into bushels. Notice Jesus has compassion on the

00:49:29.580 people, it says, because they are like sheep, scattered without a shepherd. One of the jobs 1.00

00:49:36.900 of those who work in the field of souls is to take those scattered people, once they have been cut by

00:49:42.740 the gospel, and bind them together. And so the laborer, after cutting, binds them. Listen to how

00:49:52.740 Spurgeon describes this third duty of those who labor in the field of souls. He said this,

00:49:58.720 when a laborer has only begun, oh, but then a laborer has only begun when he cuts the corn.

00:50:05.440 Much more is still wanted. As he cuts, he let the corn fall into his arm, and then he lays it along

00:50:13.240 in rows, but afterwards he binds it together and makes it into bundles that may be ingathered.

00:50:19.560 So the laborer whom God sends into the field must be a gathering laborer. He must be one who brings 0.69

00:50:27.060 God's people together, who comforts those that mourn and picks up from the earth those who were

00:50:34.860 cut down by the sharp sickle of conviction. He must bind the saints together, edifying them in

00:50:42.140 their most holy faith. Alas, how many have been scatterers, rending churches to pieces. Pray ye

00:50:49.220 the Lord of the harvest to give his church binders who can cut, binders who can, by the power of the

00:50:55.740 Holy Spirit, unite men's hearts. I have a saying at home that I use with my kids. It's the only

00:51:06.940 dad saying that I have that I invented. Most of the things that we say, we heard from other people,

00:51:13.080 our fathers. This one I get all the credit for. It doesn't apply to everything, but it applies

00:51:18.580 to pretty much everything around the house. So let's say there is a scenario. We come home,

00:51:24.000 we go in the house and one of my kids says oh all the lights are on here's what i say probably

00:51:32.160 a thousand times a week not really i say hmm problems are best solved by those who see them

00:51:40.420 problems are best solved by those who see them and in a sense this is the message of jesus here

00:51:48.240 There are many around us who are ripe for the harvest.

00:51:52.340 They are like sheep without a shepherd.

00:51:55.160 They are terrified, in danger of hell, and there's no one to tell them what to do.

00:52:02.320 And Jesus commands us to pray, but then, brothers and sisters, problems are solved by those who see them.

00:52:11.960 somehow in god's providence while he does utterly govern over all of salvation and all the salvation

00:52:20.820 of all of his sheep and will not lose a single one there is also from our point of view the

00:52:26.560 reality that when the harvest is ready when it is full there is limited time we must have a sense

00:52:35.080 of urgency we must pray that the lord would send out labors this should be a regular prayer and as

00:52:40.800 we pray this we must realize that most likely god will want to send us out into the field so be on

00:52:47.820 the lookout we live in a time of harvest and we must prepare for a frenzy of hard work let's pray

00:52:55.520 father we are thankful that first you saw us in our need you saw that we were enemies of you

00:53:07.180 that we were far from you that we are in a desperate situation and you had compassion on us

00:53:12.320 lord we didn't earn that we didn't deserve it but we're thankful for it

00:53:16.600 lord we pray that you'd give us a similar compassion for the people around us especially

00:53:22.280 the ones who are those that you're working in lord we pray that you would send many laborers

00:53:29.000 out into the harvest some in small areas like just a neighbor or a neighborhood some in in large

00:53:36.200 even national arenas and lord then we pray that we are willing that we would be willing

00:53:43.260 to go out and do the work of the labor in the field and this will be inconvenient and

00:53:49.980 uncomfortable and we pray that you'd give us strength to do it we pray this in the name of

00:53:54.480 jesus amen

The NXR Podcast - June 09, 2025

THE SERMON - The Harvest Is Ready, Are We？

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript