Joining Jesus in the Harvest: Part 2

For those of you who are a guest, I want to welcome you.

My name is Ian.

I am a church planting partner here with Redeemer Church in Fremont, a part of the initial pastoral leadership team of planting Redeemer Church in San Jose, and it has been my honor to be, and have been invited by the pastors of Redeemer Church here to be, the primary teacher in the sermon series making much of Jesus joining God's unstoppable mission for the church.

And so today I want to invite you to take your Bible and go to Matthew, chapter nine, and this is a part two sermon.

If you were with us down in San Jose last Lord's day, you will recall that we began to look at this text in Matthew, chapter nine, verses 35 through 38.

And the name of this lesson is joining Jesus in the harvest, and so we want to direct our attention now for the second part of this lesson.

And if you weren't able to be with us in San Jose last week and you do want to get caught up, I will give, I believe, a sufficient summary.

But if you want to really experience what we experienced together through the teaching of God's word last Lord's day, I would encourage you to go to the Redeemer podcast on Spotify or on YouTube and listen to that message.

Matthew, chapter nine, verses 35 through 38,.

Let us hear the word of God.

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.

That is God's word.

May he add his blessing to his reading and preaching by the empowering presence of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Every human brain operates slightly differently.

Now, if your human brain is like my human brain, then you have a built in tractor beam that draws in sound bites and music lyrics and it has a hard time getting them out once they're in there.

Maybe you're like me.

You hear a very catchy jingle on a commercial and that jingle, like BK, have it your way, will not go away For me.

I often go to bed with some type of song lyric in my head and find myself at times at night waking up saying stop it, go away.

I don't want to hear that anymore.

And for me this morning, there's a particular soundtrack going through my mind, and maybe the color of my shirts will indicate what that might be.

Today is the first Sunday of the NFL season and for the life of me, I cannot get and I don't know if I want to get the Eagles fight song out of my head.

Fly, eagles, fly.

Maybe you're like me and you get something caught in your brain and you have a hard time getting it out.

Well, that can be a blessing if the right thing is going through your brain and for others, you have to actually intentionally cause those things to repeat themselves.

You don't just, it doesn't automatically go on repeat.

You actually have to push the repeat button.

And here's my hope from last Sunday to this Sunday, I hope that on repeat, you've been hearing the words of the Lord Jesus, a simple line out of the texts that we've read the harvest is plentiful.

The harvest is plentiful.

The harvest is plentiful.

By God's grace, will we not be able to get that out of our heads?

By God's grace, may we not be able to get that out of our hearts.

Jesus says it.

Let's believe it.

The harvest is plentiful Now.

Harvest is the time of year in the farming community.

When you go out and gather the crops, you don't have to be from a rural area, you don't have to be well acquainted with agricultural nomenclature, but you get this, I get this, we all get this.

Harvest is the time when the crops are ready to go and be gathered.

And Jesus wants us to realize right now, church, that we are living in the days of harvest.

The father mercifully sent Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit, to live and to die and to rise and to ascend, and now rain over all, having secured for the father a multitude that cannot be numbered, from every people, tribe, tongue and nation, and one day they will all be gathered around the throne of God, singing songs like we've been singing this morning Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation.

That day will come.

Do you believe it?

And what Jesus is telling us?

That the people who will be there?

They're everywhere and they must be gathered.

These are the days of harvest.

In Matthew, chapter nine, verses 35 through 38, we are being led by Jesus to not just see the whole world, but our part of the world through his eyes.

To contextualize this this morning, which I believe we must do and should do and have to do.

Jesus wants us to see the Bay Area as a harvest.

Jesus wants us to see the Tri-Cities of Fremont, union City and Newark as a harvest.

Jesus wants us to see San Jose as a harvest and everything in between San Jose and San Francisco and Oakland as a harvest.

Jesus sees the Silicon Valley filled with people who are ripe for entering the Kingdom of God, ripe for gathering the people who will be there on that day when all the redeemed are gathered around the throne of God.

And Jesus wants us to know.

Right now is the time to go and find them.

The Bay Area is ripe, filled with men and women, young and old, from all different walks of life and backgrounds, both religious and irreligious, to turn from their sins and put their hope and trust in Jesus.

We need to see the world the way Jesus sees it, so practically and personally.

What does this mean?

It means that there are people right on the block in which you live, people at the place where you work, people at the school where you're being educated, people who hang out at the establishments where you enjoy the grace of life in the Bay Area, people who like what you like and do what you do, who right now, although they're not following Jesus right now, although they're not gathered with us or churches like us worshiping the Triune God, that one day they will.

They will Just like there was a day when you weren't, and now you are, by the grace of God, and so Jesus is instructing his disciples what it takes to go and gather them.

Maybe you'll agree with me on this.

There are a few things more frustrating in life than being given a responsibility and not knowing how to carry it out.

I still remember when I was in junior high and my dad announced to me the night before that from that day forward I was responsible for making the coffee in the morning.

Now I love coffee.

Our family's a big coffee family.

I still carry on that tradition.

We are caffeine I don't want to use the word addicts, but we love caffeine in the McConnell household and my friends do too.

I know a number of you are with me on this.

So having the responsibility to make coffee wasn't a big deal.

I like coffee, but you see in my family growing up my mom and dad they weren't fans of modern invention.

In fact, to this day, my dad, who's 70 years old, has never had a computer.

My mom, who is 69 years old, has never had a driver's license.

She's never driven a day in her life.

That's not because we're old fashioned, because they don't like new things.

So when I was asked to make the coffee, it wasn't this automatic drip Put it in, push the button, boom.

No, there was this old metal percolator that you had to put on the stovetop.

I mean the kind of percolator that looked like it had evil eyes and was going to kill you if you turned it on.

So here I am, waking up the day after I'm given this responsibility and I have to make the coffee.

I don't know how much water to put in it, I don't know how much coffee to put in it.

I don't even know how to put together the metal contraption where you put the grinds.

You know I'm talking.

I don't know what it's called.

I don't know how high you had to turn up the heat, but I gave it my best try, and let's just say that my interpretation of what it would take to make that pot of coffee was not grand Possibly the worst cup of coffee that was ever consumed on the face of this earth happened that next day, when my dad picked up the cup, rose to his lips and took a sip.

How do I know?

He told me.

And in my junior high instincts, rather than just say something disrespectful like, fine, you do it.

That would have been bad, trust me, I wouldn't be here preaching to you today if I said that that would have been the last day of my life.

But I said something really simple.

Now I understand it was wise, but at that point it was very desperate Dad, show me how to do it, show me how to do it.

And so he proceeded to show me this much water, this much grounds.

Here's how you put that thing together.

Here's how high you turn up the heat.

And then, from that day forward, through the power of instruction by example, I learned how to make some good coffee in that old percolator.

In fact, I was sad when I left for college and no longer made coffee on that old stovetop percolator.

That's the power of instruction through example, and that's what Jesus does when it comes to mission he shows us how to do it.

We don't have to guess.

We're not left to come up with our own devices, our own strategies, even, although I think we need to wisely consider where we are when we are around, who we are At the end of the day, the way we do the mission, the way we gather the harvest, the things we do are not new.

In fact, they're exactly what Jesus did.

That's the point of this text.

We don't have to guess how to do this.

Jesus shows us.

Listen, church.

Let's just be clear.

Jesus is more than an example, but he's not less than an example.

Jesus demonstrates what it takes to gather the harvest and he invites us to join him in doing it.

So here in this text, jesus is not only inviting the 12 disciples to be like him and do what he does.

He's also inviting us to join him in doing what he does to gather the harvest.

In fact, I mentioned this last Lord's Day.

That's the way this whole gospel culminates.

Look at Jesus sent by the Father and what he did.

Look at how Jesus sent the 12 and what they did.

And at the end of the gospel, jesus says to his whole church after his resurrection all of you go and make disciples of the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded and I'm with you always, to the end of the age.

It's all moving.

There's a momentum to Matthew's gospel, all moving in this direction.

Here's what Jesus did.

Here's how, by example, he taught the disciples, and now the disciples, as the 12 apostles, will now lead the whole church in accomplishing the mission in the same ways.

So here's the big idea that I've drawn from this text that I began to unpack last week and we'll press a little further into it, lord willing, today and it's this.

Faithfulness to the mission requires joining Jesus and doing what it takes to bring in the harvest.

Faithfulness to the mission requires joining Jesus in doing what it takes to bring in the harvest.

Faithful to our assignment church, you should want to be faithful to your personal, individual assignment on mission sent from Jesus, and we, collectively, should want to be faithful in doing what we have been assigned by the Lord here as Redeemer Church in the Bay Area.

And so faithfulness, how can we be faithful?

I would add to that how can we be fruitful, cause there is a harvest, we should expect fruit.

How can we be faithful and fruitful in the mission that we have been assigned from the Lord Jesus?

Here's what it requires.

It requires looking to the example of Jesus and doing what he did to bring in the harvest.

So if we're going to faithfully join Jesus in gathering in the harvest here in the Bay Area, then I began to suggest last Lord's Day that we need to be shaped by three elements of Christ's mission example, and last Sunday we looked at the first one.

Let me give you all three of them ahead of time, as you see them on the screen, and we'll look at the next two this morning.

In verse 35, we need to be shaped by Christ's rhythm of mission.

In verse 36, we need to be shaped by Christ's reason for mission and then finally, in verses 37 and 38, we need to be shaped by Christ's reality of mission.

Just by for sake of review but I won't say too much because we spent a whole sermon on this last Lord's Day Jesus' rhythm of mission.

For those of you who weren't here, please look at verse 35.

It's very apparent and Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages.

Here's what he did Teaching in their synagogue, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.

This is what Jesus did in every city, in every village, throughout the entire duration of his public ministry.

The bookends of this are crystal clear in Matthew's gospel.

In Matthew, chapter four, at the beginning of his earthly mission.

Here, at the end of chapter nine, at the transition in his mission, when he begins to now delegate to his twelve apostles, it's clear here's what Jesus did Teaching, proclaiming healing.

Jesus taught the scriptures, he proclaimed the good news of God's kingdom and he healed every kind of human brokenness.

And I brought to your attention that the grammatical tense of the word went points to a continuous practice, which means that Jesus kept on doing these things Teaching, proclaiming healing.

He lived in this rhythm of going into cities and villages and towns, and here's what he did all the time everywhere he went, teaching, proclaiming healing.

Teaching, proclaiming healing.

I call this his missional rhythm.

So joining Jesus, and that's the summary there.

There's a lot in there and we kind of dove into the particular functions of teaching, proclaiming healing last Sunday.

But here's the point, here's the big takeaway.

If we're going to join Jesus in the harvest, well then it looks like being shaped by his missional rhythm of teaching, proclaiming and healing.

How do we do it?

How are we faithful to our assignment?

How are we fruitful in our assignment?

As a local church, we are sent to follow the example of Jesus in teaching, proclaiming and healing.

Not just some of us, but all of us.

All of us have been sent to help religious people understand the Christ-centered message of the Bible.

Every single one of us has been sent to proclaim the good news that anyone can enter the kingdom of God through Jesus, our Savior King.

And every single one of us has been sent to utilize our resources and prayers to bring healing where there's brokenness through generous acts of mercy.

So if we're going to join Jesus in gathering the harvest of the Bay Area, then we need to understand something significant, and it's this we're not being called, first and foremost, to try to fit more evangelistic events into our already busy schedules.

Don't worry.

On the other side of the sermon series, don't expect a stacked calendar.

We're not looking to add to your calendar, but what we are asking you to do is to reevaluate your lifestyle.

Do you live your life in such a way where teaching, proclaiming and healing is a part of the way that you live?

Teaching, proclaiming and healing is not first and foremost about church activities, although it does involve that.

It's more than that Teaching, proclaiming and healing.

Joining Jesus in this missional rhythm looks like imitating the lifestyle of Jesus, imitating the lifestyle of the church that we gather and we scatter, and as we scatter we are sent to teach, proclaim and heal in Jesus' name.

Wherever we are, whoever we're with, it's who we are.

Therefore, it's what we're constantly, always on attention to do.

Second, christ's reason for mission Look at verse 36.

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

It's important that we don't see Jesus in his missional rhythm as some kind of missionary robot, just kind of going through the mechanical motions of teaching, proclaiming and healing.

Like it's his programming.

He just goes through these very mechanical and that's what we're supposed to do just kind of go through the motions of teaching, proclaiming and healing.

This all kind of flowed naturally and organically.

Why?

Because Jesus was motivated by some significant heartfelt reasons.

He had a deep level rationale for why he lived his life this way.

Jesus lived in this rhythm because he was motivated by a heavy burden that he was carrying on his heart.

So what he did with his hands let's just use hands as kind of like the apparatus of action what he did with his hands teaching, proclaiming and healing was driven by what was going on in his heart.

He felt something deeply on the heart level that motivated him to use his hands in all these beautiful, life-giving, missional ways.

So what was it?

Well, we know what's going on in the heart of Jesus in this text, because we're told that what he saw with his eyes affected what he felt with his emotions.

So Jesus is seeing things with his eyes, his literal eyes, and what he's seeing is moving him on a deep heart level.

That then results in him doing the things that he does with his hands.

So seeing leads to feeling and feeling leads to doing.

You following me.

So what did he see?

What did he see?

Well, first, we see here that he saw the crowds.

When he saw the crowds, something happens in his heart.

We're going to look at this bit by bit.

This means that Jesus was affected by the sheer mass of people that he beheld in all these cities and towns and villages.

He saw a lot of people.

Now we know from the Gospels that Jesus had an eye for the individual, and many of the beautiful stories of Christ's healing and life transformative touch happened as he stops in his tracks in the midst of busy crowds and zeroes in on an individual, just like he did with you, just like he did with me, but he still had an understanding.

He didn't miss the forest for the trees.

Jesus stepped back and he saw the masses of people, he saw the crowds, he saw the big picture.

He saw cities and towns and villages filled with lots of people who had lots of need, and that did something to him.

It should do something to us Because, although it's important that we also stay focused on individuals, it's important that we stay focused and we care about the individual people in this room and the individual people in your small group and the individual people in your family and the individual people where you work or where you go to school.

It's important to know those particular people and their particular names, but it's also important to step back and realize what every individual is a part of A great mass of humanity in desperate need of Jesus.

The most recent census data tells us that there are about 8 million men and women and children who call the Bay Area their home.

8 million, that's a lot People.

Within the Bay Area is the globally famous and influential Silicon Valley, an area that covers over 1,900 square miles in his home to about 3 million of those 8 million people.

That's a lot of people.

Last Sunday we gathered in San Jose where we were planting a church by the grace of God, the 10th largest city in the United States, the largest city in the Bay Area and home to over 1 million people.

That's a lot of people.

This morning we're gathered in Fremont, which is part of the Tri-Cities area of Fremont, union City and Newark, and together the Tri-City area is a quarter million people, over a quarter million people.

That's a lot of people.

Can you see it?

Can you see what we're a part of?

Can you see that right here in the Bay, in the Silicon Valley, in San Jose, in the Tri-Cities, there are millions of people in need and the point we're going to see is that that should do something here 8 million men, women and children in one of the most influential areas in the United States of America, one of the most under-churched and therefore under-gospelized areas of America, and that should do something to our hearts.

Church Jesus saw the crowds, but what did he see within the crowds?

It should affect the heart even more.

What did he see within the crowds?

He saw that people were harassed.

When he saw the crowds he had compassion for them because they were harassed.

This is a very graphic word.

In the original language it's even hard to say, although I've had many, many years of New Testament Greek.

It's a word that can refer to three really horrible predicaments and they kind of escalate.

Harass can refer to someone who's just simply utterly exhausted from a journey that seems to have no end.

You can ramp it up a bit and harass can refer to someone who's been violently mugged and the victim of a theft, or the word harass can refer to a body that has been mangled and left for dead Graphic word Either way.

Harassed people are hurting people.

Harassed people are desperate people.

Harassed people are very deeply needy people.

So what this means is that when Jesus looks out into the masses, he sees a lot of people who are deeply hurting and struggling to make life work in the sin, cursed, broken world.

Some are confused and out of gas because life is a rat race right.

Some people are vulnerable and have been victimized and have been the objects of injustice.

And some people are just one step away from death and for them, at this moment, physical death means continuation in spiritual death, separated from the presence of God forever because of God's justice towards sin.

So here's the point when Jesus looks out the crowds, he sees people in the complexity of their needs the needs that are obvious on the outside and the needs that are not so obvious deep on the inside.

He saw the material and the immaterial.

He was in touch with matters of the soul and matters of justice.

So since people are complex and their hurts are complex to Jesus, you never see Jesus during his ministry of teaching, proclaiming and healing.

You never see him say, ok, I'm just going to deal with the spiritual and not with the physical.

I'm just going to deal with the spiritual and not the mental.

I'm just going to deal with the spiritual and not the emotional.

I'm just going to deal with the spiritual and not the social.

Now, jesus receives people in the complexity of their need and he cares for them.

He teaches them what they need to know, he proclaims the good news they haven't heard and he steps into their brokenness and brings his healing.

He sees people holistically hurting and harassed across the board.

To be human is to be complex, and God made us this way Physical, spiritual, relational, emotional, psychological and social beings, all harassed because of the inward and outward complexities of being under the curse as sinners in a sinful world.

That's what Jesus saw and again it did something.

So if we're going to be motivated to enter into this missionary rhythm church, then we need to get off of our spiritual high horses and think we understand that these people around us are just very simplistic.

They're not simplistic, they are complex.

And it's very tempting, especially for those of us who come from very, very conservative backgrounds, to look at people in the complexity of their need and say something like this they need Jesus, but they made their own bed.

They got to sleep in it.

That's not the heart of Christ.

I'm not saying they're simple solutions.

I'm not saying it's easy to figure it all out.

I think I've used the word complex quite a bit here.

But here's the point Jesus was moved by the complexity of human need, because Jesus is the creator of humanity, so he understands all the moving parts of humanness and he came to rescue ready all of it.

So we are surrounded and I don't think I need many illustrations to point this out but church, we are surrounded by people in a complexity of need.

We are surrounded by the harassed and, to be honest, we feel like.

For our own sanity, the best thing to do with the harass that we're surrounded by is to get them out of eyesight, and they get them out of the shot of our ears, and I am no different.

We have a front porch on our house in St Jose and I used to spend the morning sitting out there on the front porch reading my Bible and praying and drinking my coffee.

I've since moved to the back and I'm realizing why I did that Instinctively.

I realized that because there is a hospital across the street from me and there are often people walking around the gates of that hospital who aren't in their right mind, saying stupid things, announcing the complexity of their need that what I need to do is get away from it.

But I'm sure I'm the only one here in the church that operates that way.

You see, jesus would not remove himself.

Jesus would look, he would see, he would hear and he would be moved.

Why?

Let me show you what else he saw.

He saw that they were harassed, and what's the next word?

Harassed and helpless.

Harassed and helpless this means that Jesus saw these harassed people as having no ability to get themselves out of their mess.

What they need they can't do for themselves.

The harassed are not able to heal their own hurts.

They are, in the words of Jesus help less.

That adds insult to injury, doesn't it?

It's one thing to have a problem.

It's another thing for the God of heaven to say you've got a problem and you can't take care of it yourself.

They are confused people who need direction, victimized people who need an advocate, and there are dying people who need to be rescued and they can't do it themselves.

That's what Jesus sees.

That's not what a social justice warrior sees.

That's not what someone with a political agenda sees.

This is what the God of heaven sees when he looks at falling humanity.

It's a mess and they can't do anything about it themselves.

How's this making you feel?

It's like how it makes me feel Horrible, horrible.

I think it's worse.

He sees harassed people.

He sees helpless people, but look at how it all culminates.

He sees them ultimately as shepherdless people, harassed and helpless, as sheep without a shepherd.

This means that ultimately, jesus sees these crowds of harassed and helpless people not ultimately in need of our help, not ultimately in need of your help, ultimately in need of his help.

He's the good shepherd.

These are shepherdless people who are harassed and can't help themselves.

And here's what they need.

More than anything, they need Jesus.

He can do for them what they cannot do for themselves.

He can lead them to green pastures and still waters.

He can restore their souls.

He can lead them on paths of righteousness for God's namesake.

He can walk with them through the valley of the shadow of death when they're fearing evil.

He can set a table before them in the presence of their enemies.

He can anoint their head with oil.

He can protect them with his rod and staff and he and he alone can lead them to the house of the Lord where they will dwell forever.

They need Jesus.

Just like you do, just like I do, jesus sees the crowds of helpless, harassed people ultimately in need of him, and he knows how they got this way.

He knows how we got this way because we all, like sheep without a shepherd, have gone astray.

We thought we knew how to do it better.

We went our own way.

The good news is Jesus came.

Jesus was sent to lay down his life for the sheep that thought they were better off without him.

You know, as a parent, I know we kind of get used to it and we kind of laugh at it at times.

But isn't it true that, as a parent and some of you have little children when you offer help to your children and they say, I'm okay, they probably don't say that clearly at a young age but basically like no, on my own, I'm all right, I can do it on my own.

It's exactly what humanity has done to the good shepherd I'm okay, I'm all right, I got this.

Oprah told me I got this.

Dr Phil said you be you, you got this.

Where does you having it lead?

Harassed and helpless, in need of a shepherd.

So, jesus, he comes and lays himself down for the sheep that didn't think they needed him.

He would climb upon the cross and be wounded for their transgressions.

He would be crushed for their iniquities.

He would pay the price to bring them peace, to buy his wounds.

He would make way for their holistic healing body, soul and spirit.

Aren't you glad Jesus did this for you?

He saw your face in the crowd.

He saw you in the complexity of your need.

He saw that you could not do what was needed on your own, that you ultimately could not help yourself, and he came to rescue you.

He came to rescue me.

He left the 99 and he came and grabbed you and brought you back to the fold.

Amen, he got you, he helped you and right now he's your shepherd and you could not live without him.

Whether there are days you realize it or not, whether there's days where you wander or not.

Here's reality You'll hear this morning, because you realize without Jesus you can do nothing.

So if we're going to join Jesus in the harvest, if we're going to do these things with our hands teaching, proclaiming and healing then we need to see things like Jesus sees them.

He sees lots of people who are harassed and helpless in the complexity of their needs and ultimately needing Him, the Savior, shepherd.

And when we see the way Jesus sees, when we begin to open our eyes like Jesus opened His eyes, I believe what we see will affect us in here and move us to do something.

In fact, notice what happens when Jesus sees the crowd.

I didn't really park on this phrase, but it's significant.

He had compassion for them.

Another very, very vivid word in the New Testament, the word compassion, describes one of the most powerful emotional experiences described for us in the Bible.

It means to be so deeply affected emotionally that you feel it physically.

The word literally means in the gut.

If you take this word and translate it literally, it would mean in the guts.

In fact, I love what the King James Version did with this.

They took this word and how they translated it bowels of mercy.

You may have heard that before.

That means that there is such an emotional response to what's being seen and observed that you actually feel it physically hits you in the gut.

It's a feeling you get inside when you're so moved by something that you physically feel it.

What Jesus is saying is that when he looked at the harassed and helpless people in need of Him, it emotionally and physically moved Him to do something about it.

What did he do?

Teaching, proclaiming healing.

If we're going to join Jesus, we must be motivated the same way church.

That's the point here.

Christ's reason for movement must be our reason for movement.

Guilt is not going to drive us into this mission activity.

Duty isn't even going to drive us into this mission activity for long.

We might do it a little bit because we feel like we have to, but duty is not what will drive us.

A sense of guilt and shame is not what will drive us.

Here's what will drive us.

The same thing that motivated and drove the heart of Jesus.

When we see the complexity of needs all around us in the Bay Area, we are going to realize that something must be done.

Finally, christ's reality of mission, verse 37 and 38,.

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.

Very briefly, three things about Christ's reality of mission here.

First, the reality of a plentiful harvest.

I've already mentioned this a number of times.

Jesus looks into those crowds.

Here's what's interesting.

He doesn't just see harassing helpless people in need of Him.

Jesus doesn't just see human beings in the complexity of their need.

Jesus doesn't just see a massive mess of human depravity and need.

He also sees, in that very same crowd, a harvest, a harvest of people who are ripe for entering the kingdom of God.

In other words, within the collective wreckage of human need, christ sees all His redeemed.

Notice the word plentiful.

This means in the original language you're going to love this.

The word plentiful means a lot, a lot, so many you can't even count.

In other words, jesus says I see a lot of lost being found.

I see plenty of religious people turning from their self-righteousness to me for righteousness.

I see plenty of guilty people coming to me for forgiveness.

I see plenty of broken people being healed In our context.

I see plenty of those 8 million in the Bay.

I see many of those 3 million in the Silicon Valley.

I see many of the quarter million of the Tri-Cities.

I see many of the 1 million in St José coming to me to be their shepherd savior.

Do you believe that it doesn't take a lot to get me excited?

You probably tell that about me.

I'm an excitable person, but I hope what you're catching from me right now, that the apex of my enthusiasm in this sermon is this Jesus has a lot of people and no one can stop them from coming to Him.

I've said this before Jesus wins.

He gets His people and we're sent to bring them in.

We're sent on a mission that is guaranteed to succeed.

Do you share this kind of optimism for the Bay Area, an optimism that's not based on wishful thinking, an optimism that's based on Christ's observation of the harvest?

Of course we want things to succeed.

Of course we want to see His church full.

Of course we want to see lots of people saved, but wanting and experiencing can often be different.

Things right, but Jesus says the harvest is plentiful.

I don't know how many.

I'm not some spiritual guru in touch with the Spirit of God, that you're not.

I can't say who or how many, but I can say that this reality that Christ is drawing our attention to should inform our faith that there are a lot.

Reality number two the reality of a plentiful harvest, but the reality of not enough laborers.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are what Few.

See, jesus observes that the amount of people who need to be gathered from the harvest is disproportionate to the amount of people who are out there working.

To bring them in the great harvest requires a great number of laborers, and Jesus is saying that there are few.

So what do these laborers do?

Maybe the problem is the job description.

Maybe people don't know what they're supposed to be doing?

No, jesus is making it clear.

Here's what they do.

They do what Jesus did Teach, proclaim, heal, teach, proclaim, heal, teach, proclaim heal.

This is how the harvest is gathered.

So when kingdom servants surrender themselves to the job offer, here's what they do, here's what you do, here's what I do.

We teach in His name, we proclaim in His name, we heal in His name.

And Jesus says through those means, through that labor, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

So here's another faith-building reality.

Oh, the harvest is plentiful.

Yes, the laborers are few, but if you are one of His laborers, your work will not be in vain.

God will work through your work.

He wants to teach through your teaching and proclaim through your proclaiming and heal through your healing, as you help people understand the Bible.

Jesus will work through your work to bring in the harvest.

As you announce the good news that anyone can enter the kingdom of God by grace, through faith in Jesus.

Jesus will work through your work and bring in the harvest.

As you use your resources and call upon God to heal brokenness around you, jesus will work through your work.

Show mercy through your mercy, to bring in the harvest.

Your labor will not be in vain.

After the great work of harvesting takes place as ordinary disciples join Jesus in the missional rhythm of teaching, proclaiming and healing, and trust that, since the harvest is plentiful and we're joining Jesus in this mission, our labor will not be in vain.

That's a reality check, isn't it?

Final reality, and then we shut the sky down the reality of needing God to send.

So there's the reality of the plentiful harvest.

There's a reality that there are too few laborers.

So what do we do about this?

That's not the right first question.

The right first question is and what do we do about this?

The right first question is what do we need God to do about this?

That's always the first question.

Amen, how do we need God to work?

And we must ask that first.

In the kingdom of God, the first question is never what do we need to do?

The first question is always what do we need God to do?

And Jesus tells us we need God to send more laborers.

Therefore, we pray.

We need God to send people.

We need God to move people.

We need God to motivate people.

We need God to get His people working and teaching, proclaiming and healing.

And the only way to get people like you, the only way to get people like me moving, is to get God to move us.

I'm including myself.

Church, you're hard to move to action.

I'm hard to move to action.

Please hear that as a genuine expression of our great need.

I, like my kingdom, I like to give myself primarily to the activities of what makes me, myself and I, a happy, unholy trinity.

Please, I'm not the only one, right?

Okay?

Oh, I told my son this morning this is the hardest Sunday of the entire calendar year for me to preach, and I've been preaching for 20 years.

Why it's kickoff Sunday?

I've been thinking about the beginning of the NFL season for a very long time, since we lost the Super Bowl to the Kansas City Chiefs in February.

I get distracted, I become enamored with insignificant things and you know what I need.

I need what you need.

I need the Lord of the harvest to move my heart to work for him.

You need the Lord of the harvest to move your heart to work for him.

And so we pray Lord of the harvest, send out laborers into your harvest.

And here's the biggest aha of this whole story, the very same 12 that Jesus says pray that the Lord of the harvest will send forth laborers into the harvest.

They pray is assumed.

And then guess who gets sent?

All 12 of them here in the text in verse chapter 10, verse 5, as they pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest.

We read in chapter 10, verse 5, these 12 Jesus sent out.

In other words, pray and be ready to be the answer to your own prayer.

Pray for the Lord to send forth laborers to teach, proclaim and heal in his name.

And as you pray that prayer, be ready for God to move on your heart and send you with renewed compassion to go amongst the crowds of harassed and helpless people in need of Jesus and teach and proclaim and heal in his name and expect a harvest.

Maybe so, with each and every one of us, would we pray for the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers?

And when we add to that prayer, here are my Lord, send me.

In conclusion, leon Morris, in his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, said the following about this particular text until now it has been Jesus who taught and healed, but in the providence of God the followers of Jesus are being given an important place in the work of the kingdom.

The choosing and the sending out of the apostles is the first step.

In due time this will be further extended through the work God would do through his church.

In this passage we may discern some of the things that Matthew saw as of continuing importance for the ongoing mission of the church.

Leave that up there for a moment.

Please See those words.

I agree with the great New Testament scholar, leon Morris.

We have an important place in the work of the kingdom.

You have an important place in the work of God's kingdom.

We have an important place in the work of the kingdom.

This text has helped us understand some of the things that are important for us to embrace as the mission of the church, and above them all is the need to be shaped by Christ's mission, shaped by his rhythm of mission, teaching, proclaiming, healing, shaped by the reason for his mission.

He was moved by what he saw in the helpless and harassed people among him and the reality of this mission.

A whole lot of those helpless and harassed people are coming into the kingdom of God.

Let's be those labors and pray that God would send more, that his kingdom would come and his will would be done in the Bay Area as it is in heaven.

Amen, amen.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven.

We say it again Let your kingdom come and your will be done in the Bay Area as it is in heaven.

Would you please, lord, send forth labors into this harvest field.

Your world is a harvest and we believe, help our unbelief that are part of the world the Bay Area, the Silicon Valley, the Tri-Cities, san Jose and places that we have not been to yet and will be moved to go.

These places are filled with harassed and helpless people who are a part of your harvest and so, by the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to not only pray for labors to go, but to be willing to be those labors who are sent to teach, proclaim and heal.

In your name, lord God, help us to be faithful.

Help us to be fruitful until you return, lord Jesus, and make all things new.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen.