"The Gospel Makes You Go" Matthew 9:35-38 Sunday Morning Worship Service

Matthew nine, verses thirty-five to thirty-eight.

The word of the Lord.

Jesus went through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, 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 the harvest.

Imagine living in a world where you didn't know what God required of you.

You didn't know what God wanted.

You didn't know what was sinful and what was righteous.

A world where if you experienced drought, it was because you didn't do the right things.

If you experienced rainfall, it's because you did do the right things.

Only there is no way to tell which of the things you did the previous year caused the drought or which provided the rain.

No concept of justice, no concept of righteousness, no concept of written revelation from a God.

You would be in darkness, you would be lost.

That is the nature of the world in all of the ancient Near East religions.

As the Old Testament was written, the Old Testament came to a world that did not have a God who revealed himself.

Often as Christians, we like to think that all religions of the world are more or less the same.

Ours has Jesus, so we're right.

But it's just, it's, it doesn't begin to adequately deal with how lost the other religions of the world are, in many of them even to this day.

But especially when you're in the Old Testament, there are no the God of Baal and the God of Dagon and the God of the Asheroth, they don't reveal themselves to their people.

There's no way of knowing God.

There's no way of knowing what's righteous.

You worship a rock and you hope the rock shows you mercy, but a rock is not, frankly, capable of showing mercy.

It's to that world that the revelation of the Old Testament comes, and it comes as a light into the world.

It comes as a light into human hearts.

It comes to reveal who God is and what God requires.

That just the nature of revelation itself is an extreme act of compassion on people.

The New Testament world, the world of the Greco-Roman Empire, also did not, they didn't have a shortage of gods, but they didn't have any concept of a God who was compassionate.

The Greek philosophers, particularly the Stoics who we meet in the New Testament, they taught that compassion precluded deity.

In other words, here is the analogy they often used.

If you saw a girl, a little, a little kid, who fell down and broke her arm.

A broken arm could be lethal back in the Roman Empire.

A girl falls down and breaks her arm.

You, as her father, as her mother would see her and you would have compassion on her.

You would want to comfort her, you'd want to hold her, you'd want to show her kindness because she's hurting.

You are compassionate towards her.

In the Greek and in the Stoic mind, that means you're just confessing that you were powerless to keep her from being hurt.

If you had the power to keep her from breaking her arm, then you wouldn't need compassion.

And that was the thinking that was everywhere in the Roman Empire in the Greek world at the life of Christ.

That the possession of compassion was basically a confession that you are not in control.

You're not powerful.

We sometimes might look at a military leader and say it's good for our military leaders to lack compassion because that might show some kind of character weakness.

That idea was baked throughout the whole Roman Empire.

Their gods could be lots of things.

Gods could be love, they could be strength, they could be speed, they could be war, they could be money.

They could not be compassionate.

Compassion would be proof positive that sovereignty does not exist.

That's the world of the New Testament.

So I want you to appreciate for a second how radical it is that the God of the Bible steps onto the stage in the Old Testament by proclaiming that he is a compassionate God.

In fact, the word compassion is perhaps the most frequent descriptor of God in the Old Testament.

Depending on translations, it's used nearly a hundred times.

God is repeatedly described as a compassionate God, the Old Testament God.

And maybe you've heard the stereotype that, you know, Christian, I mean the college lit professors who don't know any better might say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of wrath and anger and lightning bolts.

And the God of the New Testament is a God of love and sunrises and puppies.

And that dichotomy might hold up until the very second you open your Bible.

And when you open your Bible, you realize that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are the same God.

And the God of the Old Testament is repeatedly described as compassionate.

What's shocking is not so much how that Old Testament versus New Testament God divide.

What's shocking is not how much that divide fails.

It's just that there's nothing there to substantiate it.

The God of the Old Testament repeatedly describes Himself as compassionate.

So much of the Old Testament law is built around God as compassionate.

As I mentioned, there's a hundred examples.

I won't bring you through all hundred of them because I too am compassionate.

Let me just choose one.

One example.

Exodus 22.

It's a weird, lots of laws about random things, sundry and diverse laws.

It's a weird part.

You might skip it in your Bible reading kind of part.

But in the middle of it, it's tucked in this little thing that if a person comes to you and borrows something from you and leaves their jacket as a pledge, they borrow your shovel and leave you their jacket, and they go away and they don't return their shovel.

And nightfall is coming, and that guy was a poor person, and he only has one jacket.

Exodus 22, I believe it's verse 37, says, Go give him his jacket back.

Give him his jacket.

Because otherwise he'll get cold.

And the verse actually says, Go ahead and give it back to him at the end of the day, otherwise he will be cold and cry to me, and I will hear him because I am compassionate, God says.

So the little tiny law right there that if you see somebody who's cold and you happen to have his jacket, give it to him.

Because otherwise God will be offended at the sin that you're doing, because that guy needs help.

And God is compassionate.

And this is all over the Old Testament.

Moses says, Deuteronomy 30, verse 3, that you guys, the Israelites, are going to rebel against the Torah, and God is going to throw you out of Israel and send you off to captivity.

Deuteronomy 30:3

And then in captivity, you will cry out to him for help.

And guess what?

He'll hear you because he is compassionate.

In other words, the sinner who cries to God will be heard by God because God is compassionate.

The very fact that God hears prayers proves his compassionate nature.

You remember the showdown with the Elijah and the prophets of Baal, and they're screaming out and they're cutting themselves, and Elijah is mocking them because their God doesn't hear.

And what's behind that is that their God, it's not just that he doesn't have ears, because he doesn't, but he can't hear because he's not compassionate.

A compassionate God would respond.

Not ignore.

Whereas our God responds to us not simply because he has ears, but because he is compassionate.

Moses, Exodus 33, begins begging, God, you know, I want to see your glory.

I want to see your glory.

And God responds to Moses this way, Exodus 33, verse 19, I'll put it on the screen for you.

Exodus 33:19

I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.

And I will be compassionate to whom I will be compassionate.

Moses, God declares to Moses that the heart of who he is is compassion.

You can't conceive of God without compassion.

The God of the Bible, in his essence, is compassion.

Moses, if you recall, was begging God to show him his glory.

And God, after this exchange, it takes place through chapter 33, eventually takes Moses and hides his face and shows Moses the back.

God shows Moses his back, and I have no idea what that means, so don't ask me between services.

But then God speaks to Moses and says, Moses, you want to see me?

Listen.

Yahweh, Yahweh your God, is compassionate and gracious and slow to anger, abounding in covenant love and truth.

That is the God of the Old Testament.

He is so compassionate.

And now Jesus enters the world.

Born under the Roman Empire, born in a world where the Romans believed that compassion meant that you were not sovereign.

Compassion is something that a mom might have for her daughter, but certainly not something a God would have.

And in walks Jesus.

And he does one compassionate act after another.

He is filled with compassion.

And he's looking at the Israelites and they are burdened.

Look at verse 36 of Matthew 9.

Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.

They were harassed and helpless.

It's an allusion to Zechariah chapter 10, where Zechariah Yahweh speaks to Zechariah and says, My people are like sheep without a shepherd.

Zechariah 10 · chapter mention

Now what happens to a sheep without a shepherd?

Well, it will die, of course.

But how it dies is what's sad.

I mean, it die of starvation, won't find food, it gets lost, gets thirsty, it gets attacked by prey.

But a very common way that sheep without a shepherd would die is that they would give up.

They would just, they would be tired of walking and they would get caught in thorns and bramble, and they wouldn't find food and water, and they don't know where they are, and so they sit down.

They sit down.

And there's a lot of a lot of baby animals do this.

A deer will do this.

If a deer gets separated from its its mom, it will try for a while and then it gives up and it will lay down and that's how it will die.

It'll lay down and just it has energy still.

It's giving up.

That's what happens with the sheep.

Without a shepherd, he'll he'll try to fight his way around and try to force his way places, and eventually he will get frustrated and burdened and tired and lay down and stay there until he dies.

And that's the language that Jesus is using here.

He's looking at the Israelites.

And remember the scene, their people are pouring into him now.

He's been healing people and he's been teaching them.

And the floodgates are opened.

We looked at last week.

They sprung somebody out of the insane asylum to bring him.

The sick and the disease are coming from everywhere to him.

And it shouldn't be this way.

Israel has a religious structure.

There are Pharisees, there are synagogues, there are priests, there are people that should be teaching the crowds.

There are people that should be caring for them, that should be helping them out in life, but there's not.

That's the bottom line.

There's a Pharisee on every street corner.

Everyone has a Pharisee as a neighbor.

They're not helpful.

You can go to the synagogue every Saturday, it's not helping people.

He says he's looking at them and he's filled with compassion because, verse 36, they were harassed and helpless.

That word harassed, again from Zechariah 10, it's like being nipped at by wolves.

He's looking at these people and they're they're just so burdened.

They're so burdens.

The Jews taught that your situation in the afterlife was largely contingent on how you lived this life.

And if you were born Jewish, you're off to a good start.

Better to be a Pharisee, but at least you're a Jew.

Then you fill in the rest by how you live your life, by your fastidious application of the laws of the Pharisees, adhere to all of their rules, and the Pharisees heap burdens on people, and they're burdens that people cannot bear.

And so the people are getting weighed down by the very system that's supposed to help them and point them to God.

They can't stand under the weight of what's on their shoulders, and they get crippled.

Meanwhile, the Pharisees and the tax collectors and the religions of the world are nipping at them.

They're just harassed.

And there's no shepherd to fight them away, and so they just lay down and give up.

That's the second word, helpless there.

They just give up.

And he's looking at this mass of people, and he's looking at them with such sadness, such compassion.

Because a reference again to Zechariah 10, verse 2, they're like sheep without a shepherd.

Zechariah 10:2

What does Jesus do when he's confronted with a human population that is harassed and helpless, sheep without a shepherd?

Well, he demonstrates compassion to them.

This is exactly what God did to Israel in the Old Testament, when the Israelites were wandering around lost in the wilderness, wandering around without a written revelation from God.

God speaks to them through Moses, guides them through the fire and the cloud, and leads them to the promised land and gives them their word as a form of compassion.

That's what Jesus is doing here.

He is God's compassion incarnate.

The compassion of Yahweh puts on human flesh and breaks into this world.

And that's our outline for this morning.

Three ways that Yahweh's compassion invades the world.

Three ways that Yahweh's compassion breaks into the world.

It breaks into the world through these three means.

And I'll rattle off all three of them, then we'll look at them one at a time.

And Yahweh's compassion comes in the world through preaching, through evangelism, and through mercy.

And you see all three of these in verse 35.

Jesus went throughout all the cities and the villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction.

First, let's look at preaching.

Jesus begins his ministry here, going and preaching in every location.

Now, obviously, this passage connects you back to chapter 4, verse 23, and I'm just going to flip my Bible over there.

So you see at the end of Matthew chapter 4, verse 23, Jesus went through all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, healing every disease and every affliction among the people.

Matthew 4:23

That's the same word.

This the same verse is basically here at the end of Matthew 9.

What does Jesus do as a result of his compassion on the people?

In Matthew 4, he preaches the Sermon on the Mount.

The introduction of the Sermon on the Mount is that Jesus has compassion on the masses, and so he's going to teach them.

He's going to preach to them.

He's going to exposit God's word to them.

Then the application here at the end of Matthew 9, Jesus went through all the cities and the villages teaching in their synagogues.

This is his application of compassion.

He sees that the people are afflicted, he sees that they're hurting, and so he demonstrates compassion on them.

And he does so by preaching.

And there is this custom in the Jewish world of the visiting synagogues.

The synagogues would have their scroll, the synagogues would have what they're reading through every Saturday.

And a visiting dignitary or a visiting rabbi, a visiting Pharisee could give the exposition of that passage.

Now there wasn't like a unified lectionary in the Jewish world, so different synagogues might be reading different passages.

Some of them followed the same schedule, but not all of them did.

And the priest would get up there and read the passage for the day.

And then it would fall to himself to exposite it, to explain it, to give the meaning of it to the congregation.

But often he would call on a visiting dignitary and have him do that.

And that's been tempting to me sometimes.

Sunday mornings, let me read the scripture passage.

It was a long week.

Alex, would you come up and give the word this morning?

But that's what happened in the synagogues.

And Jesus is taking advantage of this situation.

He is going synagogue to synagogue.

He's going in there.

When he goes to a new place, he goes in their synagogue, and he will be the one who teaches the word there.

And this is not something that begins with Jesus.

This goes Old Testament.

Remember, Ezra did this.

Ezra looked at the Israelites and saw that they were helpless, that they were like sheep without a shepherd.

They were selling each other into slavery, and they were back in the promised land, ready to take off, and ready to rebuild Israel, and the plane wasn't going anywhere.

And so Ezra, it says, devoted himself to studying God's word, applying it to his own life, and then teaching it to others.

And then Nehemiah chapter 8, Ezra gathers the Israelites around and in public, he stands up at the platform, it says.

Nehemiah 8 · chapter mention

Stands at the platform and reads the scripture and gives sense to it, gives meaning to it, preaches to them.

And that's the pattern that Jesus follows.

He goes in the synagogue.

And, you know, I want you to appreciate how unusual it is what we're doing here.

You know, for 35 minutes this morning, you'll be sitting here listening to me preach.

There's nothing else like this in the world.

And I don't mean that about me.

I mean that about Christianity.

Nobody else, your neighbors who aren't Christians are not doing this on Sunday morning.

You know, they're mowing their grass or they're watching sports or they're drinking coffee.

Other religions aren't doing this.

You know, other religions might have somebody who gets up and gives a talk or a homily or a meditation or a devotion, but it's not from an inspired text.

And it's not, they don't have this concept that, you know, what I do, what I'm paid to do is spend time during the week studying so that I have something to say that helps you understand the word of God.

That's kind of what happens at church.

And you come and you listen because you want to know the word of God better, so that you can understand God better, so that you can worship Him.

Do you appreciate how unusual this whole structure is?

There's nothing else like this.

And God designs it this way as a sign of compassion to people.

We're sheep.

And sheep have to eat.

And what do we eat?

We eat the word of God that's brought to us through the preaching and teaching of God's word.

It's a mandate in the New Testament.

A mandate in the New Testament.

Paul says, devote yourself to Timothy.

Devote yourself to the public reading of Scripture, an allusion to Ezra.

Read the Bible, explain the Bible, and then leave and do what it says.

You gather for the teaching and preaching of God's Word.

This is exactly what Jesus does here.

And when you read that Jesus is there preaching and teaching, don't imagine some fanciful, you know, five-minute summary.

He's not reading a devotional.

Because remember, last time we saw this verse, he launches into the sermon on the mount.

So we have an idea of what a sermon of Jesus' would have been like.

He's going to preach other sermons in the Gospel of Matthew.

They're substantive, they have meat to them.

They're from the text of Scripture explaining to you what God's will is for your life from his written word.

That's what Jesus does.

He looks at people and has compassion, and so he launches into a preaching ministry.

The second form of compassion that breaks into the world here is evangelism.

He goes out teaching and preaching in the synagogues and then proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom.

He goes out evangelizing.

That phrase proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, it's used a few other times in Matthew, and it is underlining evangelism.

Matthew 4 is one place it's used.

We read that earlier.

Matthew 24 will be another.

That before the end times comes, before God rolls up this world like a scroll, the gospel of the kingdom will be preached to all the nations, it says.

So Matthew is very much bracketed by this idea that there is a gospel of the kingdom that's going into the world.

Now, of the kingdom means that there is the king.

Jesus is clearly the king.

This is the first New Testament use of the word gospel, the parallel passage in Matthew 4, the second here in Matthew 9.

When you're wondering what the New Testament means by the word gospel, this is it.

That Jesus is the king.

He is the Messiah.

He is the Savior.

As the blind man said, nay, three verses earlier, that he is the Son of David.

That's the gospel.

That Jesus is the long-awaited Savior.

Isaiah 53, written about Jesus.

That's the gospel.

That he will be crushed for our sins, that our sins will be placed on him.

He is the only one who can be a substitutionary atonement for sin.

He will die in our place.

He will bear God's wrath aimed at us in himself.

That is the gospel.

Paul says, 1 Corinthians 15, I deliver to you that which is of first importance concerning the gospel, that Jesus was crucified according to the scriptures, that he was buried according to the scriptures.

This is the gospel message.

Here, it's the gospel of the kingdom, meaning not that the kingdom is here any more than the king is here, because this message is preached in Jesus' lifetime.

It'll be called the gospel of the kingdom with the apostles going to the world preaching it.

When the church begins in Acts chapter 2, it begins in the foundation.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

Of the gospel.

And then it will be preached in the tribulation, Matthew 24 says, and identified as the gospel of the kingdom there.

All of these are arrows pointing you towards the time when the king does return, the second coming of Christ, when he does return and establishes his kingdom.

And his kingdom will be established on the gospel, which he is preaching even now through his word.

So Jesus goes around preaching in the synagogue and then evangelizing on the highways and the byways and evangelizing the masses of people, pleading with them, telling them the good news that he is David's son and David's Lord.

This leads to the third way.

The compassion breaks through in the world through mercy.

Yahweh's compassion is seen in the world through preaching, it's seen in the world through evangelism, and thirdly, it's seen in the world through acts of mercy.

And you see this at the end of verse 35.

He went around healing every disease and every affliction.

Jesus was known as a healer.

He healed, I think, I don't think it's hyperbolic here.

I think he heals every disease and every infliction he encounters.

He heals them all.

Chapter 10, he's going to send his 12 apostles, 12 disciples, out into the world as these kind of workers, and he's going to give them authority to heal as well, authority over demons.

This is the act of mercy.

The fact that Jesus could heal all these people demonstrates that he is Yahweh's compassionate incarnate.

He's Yahweh's compassionate incarnate.

What a slap in the face to the Pharisees who said that he's able to heal because he's working for the devil.

That was the last verse we read.

What nonsense.

You can't say that the devil is compassionate in God.

A Pharisee can't say the devil is compassionate and God is angry.

Flip those.

The devil wants to harm, the devil wants to hurt, and God is compassionate.

And you know that because you look at Jesus and he heals every malady he encounters.

Jesus didn't heal people only to heal them.

Although in some cases he did, outside of our little chapter in Matthew 9.

He healed the masses, of course.

But in Matthew 9, these healings, one after another, are meant to teach you the nature of the gospel.

That he can tell the paralytic, you can walk to show that your sins are forgiven.

The gospel can forgive you of your sins.

He can tell Levi the tax collector that you are now righteous because the gospel can make you righteous.

He can tell the blind person, you can now see, because the gospel helps you see the truth of who Jesus is.

The mute person, you can now speak because the gospel empowers your speech.

The gospel gives you something spiritual to say to the world.

That doesn't mean, jumping to present day, that the church still has this miraculous power to heal every sickness we encounter.

No church in the world does.

If there was one person in the world who did, he would clear out the hospitals.

He would heal everyone like Jesus did.

So what does this mean for today?

Well, Ephesians 4 gives you a big hint, Ephesians 4, verse 11, that God gives to the church apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of the ministry, for the building up the body of Christ.

Ephesians 4:11

Do you notice that this verse, verse 35, acts as the philosophy of ministry for the Christian church?

We do this.

We gather for preaching, we scatter to evangelize, and as you're in the world evangelizing, you are doing acts of mercy to people.

You are showing kindness, you're meeting needs.

You're praying for people to be healed.

You should pray for people to be healed.

That is modeled in the New Testament.

We are to pray for people to be healed.

But we understand that God does not heal everybody.

He heals according to his will.

Nevertheless, it is not a sign of compassion for you to tell somebody, I'm not going to pray for your healing in case God doesn't want to heal you.

Do you feel loved?

It is a sign of compassion for you to tell somebody, I am going to pray for you to be healed.

Because God often does heal people.

And I'm going to pray for you to be healed.

I'm also going to pray that your faith in Jesus Christ would be strong.

You know that God is doing 10,000 things through a trial in your life.

It might not be God's will to heal a person.

A person could be suffering from some kind of sickness and illness designed to break them down and draw them to faith in Christ.

A healing would short circuit that.

A Christian could go through some kind of suffering and illness designed to increase their confidence in Christ, in their faith, or designed to magnify their trust in God over physical health to the world.

A Christian could be suffering from an illness and God's not going to heal them because God's doing more through their sickness and illness with their friends and family and the nurses and doctors than he would be if he healed them.

I mean, that's just the reality.

That's James chapter 1.

James 1 · chapter mention

He uses these trials to refine your faith, not to short circuit it.

But then there's James chapter 5.

James 5 · chapter mention

Pray for healing.

So we understand those aren't contradictions.

We do them both.

We do pray for healing.

We beg God to heal people.

At the same time, we know it's all according to his will, that some people he will heal and some people he won't.

Yet if he doesn't heal you, you know he's doing something through your struggles, through your trials, for your good and for his glory.

So that's the full-package model that we come together as a church for the preaching of God's word.

That's how we eat.

We scatter into the world to do evangelism.

The church gathered on the Lord's Day is not exist for evangelism, it exists to feed the sheep.

The sheep leave the church.

They go into the world like Jesus did, like the apostles modeled, preaching the gospel to those they encounter.

While they're in the world evangelizing, they're encountering people with needs and they seek to pray for healing for those with physical needs.

They demonstrate the love and compassion.

You can just tell someone, listen, God is a compassionate God.

He shows his compassion to us through the gospel, through Jesus' death and resurrection.

And as part of that, he'll listen to us pray.

Let's pray right now for someone's healing.

And do you understand that as you pray for people and you share the gospel with them, you're validating the gospel?

You're praying for their healing and you're sharing Christ with them.

Now, is it better for them to be healed or come to faith in Christ?

Well, obviously come to faith in Christ.

But they're not at war with each other.

Those two things aren't at odds.

They can both be friends.

Especially if they're explained carefully to someone.

That yes, God hears prayers and yes, he does heal.

But he wants you to come to faith in his son.

That's the model of ministry from Jesus Christ.

But I'll tell you, that model can seem overwhelming.

It seems simple enough in verse 35, but it gets overwhelming by verse 37.

Verse 37, Jesus shifts his metaphors here from the flock to the field.

He tells his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, the labors are few.

The world is filled with people who need compassion.

The world is not filled with people who have God's compassion.

There's way more people in the world that need it than have it.

And so it can be overwhelming.

It's overwhelming for Jesus.

Our Lord is overwhelmed at it.

Here at the end of Matthew 9, he feels overwhelmed.

Just the crowds of people coming to him.

Mark makes it clear he dodges out of there to get some space so he can pray and so he can go back to preaching.

There's just so many needs surrounding him.

It's overwhelming.

There's not enough workers.

And so Jesus gives a prayer request.

I mean, that's noteworthy.

Jesus says to his disciples, would you pray for me in this way?

Pray that the Lord of the harvest could send out laborers into the harvest.

Well, who's the Lord of the harvest?

He is.

So just look at this full circle here.

Disciples pray to the Lord of the harvest that he'll send out workers of the harvest.

Look at chapter 10, verse 1.

He sends them out in the harvest.

You know, you pray to Jesus, he's going to answer the prayer.

Jesus says, pray this, and you pray to him, he'll answer it, and he'll probably use you to do it.

Lord, you can picture Andrew, right?

Lord, send out a worker of the harvest and Jesus.

There you go, Andrew.

Have fun.

Now I bit off more than I can chew with this harvest versus we'll look at them on Thanksgiving Day because it's got the word harvest in it and Thanksgiving Day.

That'll be our Thanksgiving Day sermon.

But I just want you to appreciate for the second how overwhelming the world is.

Overwhelming.

42, 43% of the world is unreached.

Meaning that there's no church in their neighborhood.

There's no church in their world.

They don't have a Bible.

They can go to the store and buy a Bible.

There's not a church down the street.

They don't hear the gospel, no Christian radio, no Christian TV.

It's 40% of the world or so.

I mean, the harvest is huge.

Every Christian should be a worker in the field.

That's what it means to be saved, to be part of the Great Commission.

But the problem is, like a field, I love the field analogy, there's lots of rows in the field.

Some rows have no workers in them.

And some rows are you're working elbow to elbow with workers.

You're crowded in there.

And other whole sections of the field are just empty.

Empty.

And Jesus says, pray.

You're confronted by the overwhelming nature of the unreached world.

Pray.

Pray that God would send workers in the harvest.

And you better be careful if you are obedient to that prayer request.

Because what happened to Andrew could happen to you.

You pray that God would send out workers in the field and you might be the answer to your own prayer.

Lord, we're thankful that you've given us the gospel as news to the world.

We're thankful that you are the Lord that can make us walk.

You are the Lord that can make us righteous as you did for Levi.

You're the Lord that can make us new, new inside.

What the old covenant could not do.

You are the Lord that can make us clean.

I think of the woman who was bleeding for twelve years, unclean, unable to worship for twelve years, and you purify her through her faith.

You are the Lord that can make us live.

We think of the little girl and how you took her hand and rose her to life.

The gospel does that to us.

It takes our dead souls and makes us alive.

We think of the blind people.

The gospel can make us see.

We're come into this world with our eyes closed to spiritual truth, and you open our eyes, and we see that you are the Savior.

And the gospel can make us speak.

The gospel loosed the tongue of the blind man through his faith, and may it loose our tongues as well.

May we go into the vineyard and we go into the field speaking the truth of the gospel.

We see a mute man who's able to spread your name through the whole region.

Lord, I pray that there would be a few people in this congregation, a few people at Emmanuel Bible Church that would have had their tongues loosed by you, who can go into the world and spread your fame far and wide.

It's a big world, Lord, and so we pray that you would raise up workers for the harvest.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Thank you for being with us today.

And now a parting word from Pastor Jesse.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, emmanuelbible.church.

If you're not a member of the local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Manuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you speak Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel locally.