If you got your Bible, go ahead and let's open up to Matthew chapter nine. We're gonna be walking through that this morning. Be helpful for you to already get access to that. Get on your phone or get in. In your hardcover.
If you're holding it right there in front of you. Get that ready. I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but depending on where you grow up, it probably dictates things that you do know or that you don't know, all right? And it's not right or wrong. It's just kind of what it is, where your raise is going to shape that, right?
And if you've really only lived in one place over the length of your life and it just kind of continues moving out and going different places changes that up, but it's not a problem. Again, it's just you don't know what you don't know, right? It's like, if you've lived in central Kentucky or this rough area for most of your life, then there's lots of things that you do know, all right? You probably know about tobacco and you probably know about horse racing. You.
You probably know about basketball. You might care too much about basketball to where you're blinded about basketball, but you probably. You probably know some things about basketball, right? And that's all great, but there's also, like, some things that you don't know, and it's not your fault because you've been here your whole life. You don't really know.
But, like. Like, for someone like me who hasn't grown up in an environment like this, well, there's some parts of my life that I know that you probably don't know. And it's okay because you just don't know what you don't know. So, like, I grew up in West Texas, and I grew up in a economy that was, like 98% based off of the oil field and the jobs that existed there and everything that existed off of it and just the ways that it would kind of, you know, grow or decline and all those kinds of strange things, and you just don't know about that. And it's okay.
You don't need to know about that. It's just different, right? And so you know your stuff. I know my stuff. I know the oil field.
I know Friday night football. Right? And I know, like, barbecue. Okay, that's cool stuff. But also then, like, I grew up not knowing anything about, like, tobacco or anything that grows really.
Like, I grew up in the desert. Like, nothing grows there. We don't get rain, nothing grows. We kind of have cotton. But that's kind of a joke, and no one really ever does that.
Okay. It's like the idea of the word harvest is something I don't know. In fact, I can remember as a kid, every fall we would have harvest parties, which is funny to me because no one where I lived knew what a harvest was, but we would have harvest parties. And in my mind, the pictures of harvest parties were like things from the 1800s where people walk through fields harvesting things by hand. Or it was like, you know, maybe I'd seen videos of the first tractors and all the smoke coming out of them.
Like, I had no concept of what harvest was. Okay? And so I don't know what I don't know. You don't know what you don't know. It's fine.
It's all even. Okay. Now, we started a sermon series last week that we call dangerous prayers. And the prayer that we're going to be looking at today uses harvest language. And I'm telling you that it's something that you will be more familiar with than I was when I was in my youth.
What we're going to do is we're going to start by just zooming in real tight on the prayer, what Jesus tells us to pray, and then through the rest of the message, we're just going to kind of pull out a little at a time, zooming out until we can see the full picture. Okay, so here's. This is the end of Matthew, chapter 9. Here's the last two verses, verse 37 and 38, the very end Jesus says. Then he said to his disciples.
This is Jesus saying to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.
That prayer doesn't seem very dangerous. It doesn't look dangerous. It doesn't sound dangerous. But I'm going to tell you right now that the context of this prayer that Jesus tells us to pray is going to change how you look at this prayer. And by the end of this message, I think you may recognize that this is a very dangerous prayer.
Now, if we pull back just a little bit, not to the full picture yet, but just a little bit. Let's go two verses before those two verses where we started, verse 35 and 36. Again, this is the end of Matthew, chapter 9 says, Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and Sickness. And when he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a Shepherd. Now, verse 35, there, this starting point is a picture of what we talked about last week.
Remember, we looked at the Lord's Prayer and we focused in on that line, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Verse 35 shows us how Jesus was bringing his kingdom to. To earth. And Jesus did this in very good and very simple practical things, where he was giving people just kind of a taste or a glimpse of what his kingdom looked like, something better. But it wasn't just about doing the good things.
It's about fulfilling God's will. And if you remember, last week, we looked at this, we defined it this way. The will of God is that every person would accept and acknowledge him as Lord. And so we see Jesus did this with his life. He didn't just talk about it, but he did it.
He goes around and he's doing good stuff for people to help lead them to this new kingdom where Jesus is Lord. But it's all rooted in a really big idea. In fact, I think that this entire section can be summed up with this word compassion. I think the entire chapter of Matthew 9, maybe even Matthew 10, into 11 and before and 8, like all of it, centers for really on this one very key significant word, compassion.
The Greek word for the word compassion. It carries an idea of deep intestinal pain. Have you ever felt an emotion, but you didn't just feel it emotionally, you felt it physically? That's kind of what we're talking about here. Compassion has a feeling, a physical feeling to it, a deep intestinal pain kind of a feeling.
It's a feeling that you have deep in your guts. It's when you watch a friend struggle with infertility and you hurt, not just emotionally for them, but you feel it physically. That's compassion. It's when your kids have. Have grown up and they're adults now, and they're living adult lives, but you see them struggling or hurting you.
You watch them go through a divorce, or you watch them go through something painful, and you don't just hurt hurt for them emotionally, you physically feel it deep within your being. It's compassion. It's when you're sitting with someone who has survived some sort of a tragic accident, but loved ones that they have didn't survive. You sit with someone in the middle of grieving and in their pain, and you care. And you don't just emotionally care, but you physically feel that Gut, stabbing pain.
That word is compassion. And what we need to recognize right off the bat is that Jesus sees people differently than we do. Because when Jesus saw people, it felt like a kick to the guts. He saw people, all people, every person, as being helpless, like a sheep that was in desperate need, a shepherd, a sheep that's just lost and uncared for. And he needs a shepherd to come along and to provide and to protect and to care for.
This is how Jesus viewed every single person. When we would speak of these kinds of things, we would say stuff like, well, his heart breaks for them.
I think a more accurate way would be his guts pained for them.
And I bet that you don't see people like that.
Maybe you do, some people, but not all people. I don't.
Maybe there's some people that you feel that way about. It's your kids or your spouse or your closest friends, especially your grandma, Right? But you probably don't feel that way about every person that you've ever seen.
But Jesus does.
And he isn't wrong, for we are. We have the wrong perspective. And so Jesus sees people as being in need. He didn't see people as capable of figuring everything out on their own. I think that's a key idea.
Every person that you've ever seen needs help. Do you believe that every person that you've ever seen needs grace? Do you believe that? I think sometimes we look at people as if they should have everything all figured out. Sometimes we expect people to clean up their act or for them to be able to get it together.
And then we tend to become calloused or jaded or harsh. Because quite frankly, it is much easier to judge people than it is to feel compassion for people.
And there's a. There's a mindset in which we could say that Christians can be the worst at this. It is our reputation. Religious people tend to see need as evidence of failure and hopelessness. But I don't think that's completely fair.
I don't think it's new to us. I think all religions in all times have been like this. In fact, I don't think this is even a religious issue. I think this is a people issue.
Nonetheless. There's this word that kind of stung out to me that I just kind of got hung up on there in verse 36, where Jesus says that they're harassed, that the people he sees that he has deep compassion for, they are not just helpless, but that they are also harassed. And I think that is a shot at the religious people of his day. I think when we see hurting around us, we usually assume that it's deserved. We think people are getting what it is that they've earned.
And sometimes we might be right.
Even so, that's not how Jesus viewed it. He saw people as helpless, needing someone to come alongside of them. And he saw religious people as just heaping on the guilt and the shame, harassing the helpless. And right off the bat, all people in all circumstances and various levels of responsibility for the situation that they are in. All people made Jesus hurt in the depths of his being.
Jesus saw people as being in need, and it broke his heart.
And he responded with compassion. And I can show you. So if you pull back even further and you begin looking at the full context of Matthew chapter nine, go to the very first verse at the beginning. The chapter starts with Jesus finding a paralyzed man. And instead of fixing his legs, he fixes his sin problem.
Jesus offers to forgive this man's sins, which throws everybody off. No one's sure what exactly that means or how to respond to it. There's some religious people there who are witnessed the whole thing, and they're quite upset. It seems as if Jesus is almost like picking a fight in this situation as he starts this out. But in the context of this, he.
He stops and he asks a question. Jesus says, which is harder to heal a body or to forgive sins? Which is a great question that no one can answer because no one can really do either one of them right. So Jesus says, you know what? I'll tell you what, I'll just do both.
And so he. He heals the man and he makes him able to walk again, and then he forgives his sins. And part of that's very normal because Jesus had healed bodies all the time. This is what he did. But this story is unique.
He doesn't necessarily go around offering to forgive people's sins all the time. Regardless of all of that. If you just look at the story as a whole, it is an act of compassion. Is Jesus caring for the needs of a man and acting? And I think it's one of the ways that Jesus is bringing his kingdom earth.
And if you could just for a moment, could you imagine how many days would you celebrate being healed from Jesus before you stopped celebrating? Can you imagine what happened in that guy's home?
It's compassion. And the story ends with a very simple phrase saying that the people praised God. I bet they did. The next story is the story of Matthew. Matthew writes the Gospel called Matthew, the story of Jesus life.
But this is where he Intersects with the story. It's Matthew 9. Jesus is with his disciples. He sees Matthew, a tax collector, and he calls him. He invites him to come and follow.
And there's major issues with this. A tax collector is an incredible outcast. They are excommunicated from, from their family, from the community, from their culture, everywhere. He is a man with no people. And by working for the Romans, it doesn't mean that the Romans love you now.
They hate you just as much as everybody else. He is an isolated man no one cares for, no one loves. He is not the kind of person that a religious teacher would ask to follow. But Matthew follows, which leads to a dinner party at Matthew's house where Jesus Cruise shows up and Matthew's small group of friends show up. You have to imagine that the small group of friends he knows are probably not the best and the brightest.
It just so happens that some religious teachers see all this playing out, remember that word harassed.
And they pull some disciples aside and they ask them, what's up with your teacher? Why is he always hanging out with the worst of the worst? Why is he hanging out with these sinners and tax collectors? Because it doesn't make sense that a religious teacher would be in those kinds of environments. They don't see with compassion.
They don't see people in need. They see people who are getting what they deserve and they seek to harass.
But Jesus responds by saying that sick people need doctors, not the healthy people. That makes sense. And he also says this. He says, I didn't show up to judge. I came for mercy.
I'm all about mercy. Which again is another point of conflict for us, not exactly the reputation of the church or of Christians. We're no more for our judgment. We aren't good at compassion. But Jesus is.
It's. And it's how he's bringing his kingdom to earth. It's what he's doing. We see it again in this story. And just can you imagine Matthew, hated by his own parents, losing every relationship he's ever had, is suddenly welcomed back home, loved by his parents, sees pride in their face over him for the first time.
Can you imagine? All from an act of compassion. All people in all circumstances and various levels of responsibility all get the compassion of Jesus. Jesus, a couple verses down, he's invited to come raise a dead girl back to life. And that's a pretty bold request.
But Jesus wants to honor the request. And so he's on his way with the Father. A crowd begins kind of forming it around and pressing in on him. And somehow, in the midst of all of it, some woman kind of pushes through the crowd and gets to Jesus and reaches out and just touches the hem of his jacket. It's an incredible act of faith.
She's terrified that anyone might notice her. She's desperate. And Jesus knows. And so he stops and he draws attention to it, which sounds scary. Sounds like he's going to reprimand her, but he doesn't.
Instead, he acknowledges her and he gives her dignity. He celebrates her act of faith. He makes a big deal about her. And can you just imagine how simple that interaction was? And how for the first time in over 12 years, this woman with her own medical issue that she's fighting is suddenly treated with respect.
She has community again. She has relationships again. Everything in this moment changes because of a deep act of compassion and mercy. Can you imagine her joy to be able to have relationships again? And can you imagine the father of the little dead girl off to the side, waiting patiently or not?
Jesus turns his attention back to him. They begin making it to the home of the dead girl. Jesus raises her from the dead. And one of the most ridiculous statements in the Bible exists in that story where it says the news of this spread all over. Yeah, I bet it did.
Started with compassion from Jesus, and he begins bringing his kingdom to earth, giving just glimpses, just tastes of what this kingdom can look like. And can you imagine?
Can you imagine what it would feel like to watch your lifeless little daughter take a breath?
How long would it be before you'd stop celebrating?
In the next story, Jesus heals again. He starts by healing two blind men. They express faith in Jesus and they walk away healed. And news spreads. And then Jesus is approached by a man who is demon possessed and unable to speak for himself.
And Jesus casts out the demon, and the man speaks. And the crowds are blown away. And news spreads. Same patterns. First compassion.
Jesus seeing people and caring for them deeply from his guts. And then him bringing his kingdom to earth. And over and over and over again, you see the stories of lives and families and relationships being restored, all because Jesus had compassion. Jesus sees people as being in need, and he does not judge them for that. Instead, he wants to give a glimpse of what his kingdom looks like.
It's a fascinating chapter. Story after story of compassion, verse one through verse 33, jumping to verse 35, where we were just a moment ago, to verse 38, again highlighting this big idea of compassion. But in the middle of this chapter, just right in the middle of all These stories, verse 34 sticks out like A sore thumb. It doesn't belong, but it exists.
So if the Pharisees are watching all this and they say it's by the prince of demons that he drives out demons, do you see the difference that compassion makes?
They don't see people as helpless. No compassion, just harassing. Couple big ideas I need you to see here. Okay, one. First of all, Jesus is all about mercy and compassion.
If I haven't said it enough, you've got to be able to see it consistently coming across people who were desperate. And he did not judge them for their desperation. Instead, he leaned in and wanted to find ways to take their burdens away. And then number two, people are more comfortable with judgment than they are with mercy and compassion. We're not like Jesus.
We see the desperate people around us as getting what they deserved, not as clients deserving of mercy. And this is the context. These are the stories that build up to this moment in Matthew chapter nine, where it says that Jesus had compassion on the crowds because they looked harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. And then that's the moment when Jesus tells the disciples to pray for workers, pray for workers.
That part should probably catch you off guard because he doesn't tell them to pray for those who are lost. He doesn't say, pray for those who are harassed and helpless like sheep without shepherd. He doesn't say, pray for them. But that's not what we do.
Have you ever cared deeply about someone and wanted them to come to Christ and you've prayed? God, I need you to save them.
Have you ever prayed or pleaded with God that you need him to somehow step into that person's life and make some sort of an impact on them? And God, I need you to shape them. Have you ever prayed? God, I need you to step into heart. I need you to soften their heart.
I need you to soften their mind so that they will be receptive to your truth. God, I need you to do work in their life. Have you ever prayed for God to make someone ripe? And maybe not in that language, but in that spirit? God, I need you to make them ready for the goodness of who you are.
See, our problem is that we don't have compassion like Jesus. And so we don't see people like Jesus. We don't see the fields around us as being ripe. We don't see the opportunities that are literally all around us. Instead, I think what we do is we see individual, ripe pieces of something that exist in a field that is just thick with weeds.
We see the people that we Love. We see the people that we care about as they're available or their potential, or they're the ones who I want to be able to accept the gospel. And then we forget that every other person that we run into is someone that someone else loves.
And we just assume they're all just lost weeds.
And so we pray that more people would be ripe.
But Jesus only sees ripe fields. Jesus sees every person as eligible. He sees every person as qualified. Everyone. Every single person.
And so if the problem isn't eligibility, then the problem is the lack of workers. Jesus doesn't tell us to pray for the lost. He tells us to pray for workers, pray for people to show up to the fields that are ripe for harvest, pray for workers to do their jobs. And so I want you to see the full picture. Now we have Matthew, chapter 9.
Jesus in compassion is bringing his kingdom to earth. He sees people needing his mercy, and he's just pouring it out. He's going from village to village, place to place, pouring out his mercy, his love, his compassion in all these places. And at the end of the chapter, it's almost as if Jesus is saying, I. I'm not even hardly making a dent. The need is more than what he can do.
There are so many people who are needing the mercy of God. There are so many people who need to see Jesus as their Lord. And it's going to require some help beyond what Jesus can do by himself. And maybe that statement makes you uncomfortable, but it's what he's doing. And so you know what Jesus does next.
Matthew 9 finishes with this prayer in Matthew chapter 10, verse 1. We don't read it like they're connected because, you know, it's a chapter break, but they're connected. The very next verse, Jesus sends out his disciples. He gives them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. But I want you to catch this.
In one verse, Jesus tells his disciples to pray for workers as if they've gathered around. Their heads are bowed, their eyes are closed. They're praying for workers. They open their eyes, they say, amen. And then Jesus looks and says, hey, look at that.
He answered my prayer. Here you are. I see 12 workers. And he sends them out and they go.
If you think you're on Jesus team, if there's any part of you that believes that you are a follower of Jesus and there's any part of you that is willing to pray this prayer for workers, you need to know you're a worker.
And it's probably time for you to get to harvesting.
And so this is a dangerous prayer because you are the answer to the prayer.
The disciples in Matthew 9 and 10 don't really get it. They go do what Jesus assigns them to do. But you can tell that they don't really have that compassion piece yet. You can read through the rest of gospels and you can see that they don't really love like Jesus yet. And you can tell that they're trying to be faithful, but their heart just isn't in it yet.
Until Acts chapter four. I believe that's the first place where we begin to see the disciples having the compassion that Jesus has. In Acts, chapter four, Peter and John are facing the first persecution of the church. This is after Jesus crucifixion. They're healing people in the name of Jesus, which draws attention from the same men in authority who condemned Jesus to death, the men responsible for crucifying Jesus.
And they bring Peter and John in to testify in front of them. They anticipate it to be rather easy, but instead, Peter and John speak boldly. They refuse to quit talking about Jesus, and the men in authority are blown away. They see these two men as uneducated, unqualified. These are ordinary men, and yet they're speaking with a boldness and a confidence that doesn't make sense to them.
It completely catches them off guard. And they're still kind of facing heat for the whole Jesus thing. And so they decide to just kind of threaten Peter and John and send them off, hoping that that works. That'll be the last time the disciples hear empty threats.
But in this moment, Peter and John, they go back to the rest of the believers. They share what happened. And then the church begins to pray. It's all in Acts chapter four. And I'm gonna tell you it's a big, powerful prayer.
But if you don't know what the prayer is, you're not gonna know what's in the prayer. Like, you're not gonna expect what's in the prayer to be in the prayer. You're gonna expect certain other things to be in a prayer. In a moment like this, after facing the persecution, this prayer is probably gonna catch you off guard. I can tell you that in the prayer, you're not going to find any sort of language that sounds anything like, God, protect us from the bad guys.
It's not there. And you're not going to find any language in their prayer that sounds anything like God. We can't do this anymore. It's not there. You're not going to find any language in this prayer that sounds anything like God.
Why are bad things happening to us?
And you're not going to find anything in this prayer that sounds anything like God. We need better leaders like God. If you could just put people in positions of leadership in those authority positions who wouldn't persecute us, then we'd be able to share your gospel freely. And that would be like. No, that language isn't there, not at all on their minds.
No. Their prayer celebrates an almighty, powerful God. And the only time the prayer even turns inward to themselves. The only time is in this little verse, verse 29. And this is powerful.
They pray now, Lord, consider their threats. Those men in authority who wish to work against us. God, consider their threats. Enable your servants to speak your word with boldness. I feel like maybe we missed what this is saying.
If I were going to rewrite it in Ben's terms, I would write the prayer something like this. God, look at what they're doing. We're going to ignore it. Give us boldness. It's a crazy prayer, isn't it?
I firmly believe, I firmly believe that the reason the first church prayed for boldness and not safety was because they saw fields that were ripe harvest. And they recognized that there were too many opportunities around them now to suddenly just get shy or bashful. There were too many people who needed to be saved for them to now suddenly just back down over petty small little threats. I believe that these disciples had caught that same gut wrenching pain that Jesus had. I think the disciples had found compassion.
The college that I went to in Joppa, Missouri, Ozark Christian College, had this old mural in one of the buildings and they got rid of it when they built a new building, but they redid it. They put this new mural up in a new building right in when you walk in. In fact, this is one of the very first things you may see when you first come to the school. And this art is called the Lord of the Harvest. And it's pretty self explanatory.
I mean you can look and you can see there's like a Jesus like figure in the middle. You can see the city skyline off in the distance. You can see workers and trees and, and you can see a field. And you can recognize that this field is very large. In fact, there's not enough workers, not enough workers.
But if you look closely, if you look closely, you might start to see faces.
The problem isn't that people need to be more ready for Jesus. The problem is that we need to be more ready to be Jesus to the people around us. Do you see the difference?
We need more compassion. We need to feel it like Jesus feels it. And Jesus was willing to die out of his compassion. He was willing to die for us out of his compassion. I'm not asking you to die for someone out of your compassion.
I'm just saying can you have enough compassion for someone to have a bold conversation with them?
Could you begin to recognize and see that every person you've ever seen is loved deeply by God and that they may not ever know it if you don't say something?
That is what our Just One campaign was all about. It's not just one in the sense that I'm asking you to only care about one person. It is just one. And that I'm asking you to recognize that every single person is loved by God. And that if you would live like that, then by the end of the day, the year, maybe you would help one person know him.
And if you could do that, it would change eternity.
Guys, the fields are ripe. The fields are ripe.
I want to ask you to pray something with me. I'm going to guide you through a prayer time here. I'll say some things. I'll pray. You'll hear me pray, and then you'll hear me address you and ask you to pray.
You'll hear some silence for a time. That's your opportunity to just kind of meditate and pray and to think through some stuff. But I want to invite you to do that. Maybe you need to bow your head and close your eyes. Maybe you want to put your hands out and look upward.
There will be some cues on the screen if you want to look at that as well. I want to ask you to pray with me. I'm telling you this is a dangerous prayer.
If you've got the guts, I want you to pray this with me.
Father. You look out at this world and you see fields ripe for harvest. You see people. Not crowds, but people. People with names, People you love.
People who need Jesus Cap City. I want you to think about your ordinary week. Think about your neighborhood and your job, your school, your gym, maybe even your kitchen table. I want you to ask God, who have you already put in front of me, God, who have you already put in front of me? Let one or two faces come to mind, then just hold them there.
Lord, you told us to pray for workers in your harvest, and so we're praying. Send workers into your harvest. Rattle the hearts of Jesus followers who aren't getting it done. And God, rattle our hearts when we are the Ones who are not getting it done.
Cap City Be honest with God. Are you working or are you judging?
God, forgive us for not seeing. God forgive me for being so wrapped up in myself and my schedule, my worries and my stuff that I don't even see the people who are around me.
In Cap City, I want you to think of the people you look past without meaning to the cashier that you see or the co worker down the hall, the neighbor whose name you've never learned, the family member you've given up on. I want you to pray and ask God, God give me eyes to see the one I keep looking past.
God for the ones you've shown us.
Give me courage and boldness enough to open my mouth. Give me wisdom to say what I need to say and then to trust you to do what only you can do. Because God, you are the one who can challenge and shape the heart.
And God, give me grace. Always grace. God give us grace in our words and grace in our patience. Grace like the grace that you keep pouring out over us.
Cap City Pray for courage and wisdom and grace.
Cap City, I'm going to ask you to pray these words with me. You'll see them on the screen if you're willing to. It's a hard prayer. It's a dangerous prayer, because it sounds like praying with your hand up to volunteer.
But I believe this is what it looks like to follow Jesus. I believe this is what it looks like for him to be our Lord.
And so I want you to say these words. Pray this prayer. Lord of the harvest, send out workers because Frankfurt is ripe for harvest. Send me. Amen.