May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my rock, and my redeemer. Amen. Some of you may know the name John Lennox. If not, he is a professor emeritus from Oxford at Oxford University. A professor of mathematics is what he was most known for there. But more widely and commonly in Christian circles, he is also known as a Christian apologist. And he is one who has a very keen and sharp mind and who is able to provide reasonable answers to critics of the Christian faith who are looking from without from a more secular perspective, you might say. If you haven't heard of him, or uh if you haven't listened to him in a while, I encourage you to go look him up, John Lennox. I was listening to him recently in an interview with a professed agnostic, and it was a very respectful conversation the two were having together. And the interviewer was asking Dr. Lennox about his Christian faith, which he was known for to be a very committed Christian. And I was really quite impressed and marveled at the way that Professor Lennox was able to very graciously invite this interviewer into a deeper conversation, which got down to a personal level. At a certain point, the man interviewing Dr. Lennox said to him, John, if you were to suggest a way for me to perhaps entertain Christian faith as one who doesn't have it, where would you suggest I begin? In other words, what is a good starting point for me as one who would maybe want to sincerely consider God and what faith in God might look like? And it was at that point that I immediately paused, hit the pause button, because for one, myself, I thought, wow, what a wonderful opportunity. I want to try and answer that question for my own sake and see how would I respond if someone were to ask me. I also didn't want to hear Dr. Lenox's response before I formulated my own. But because I respect him so much, I also wanted to know how does my response response measure up to Dr. Linux's response? And well, I was delighted to know once I hit the play button that we were mostly on the same page, albeit he was far more articulate than I am and was in my own head. But essentially what he offered this man was one, a caution. He said, I would want you to know this to begin with, that the Christian faith, what we claim to believe, is not merely a set of propositions that we are being asked to give our intellectual assent over to. We don't just have a framework of things to believe in, and we just check off the boxes and say we believe it, and we're good, and we're Christian. But he said, rather, even right from the beginning, the Christian faith is really more about a true and living relationship, a relationship that you are being called into to enter into with God. Sure, it's very possible to come to know some things about God and to assess God from a distance, but unless you actually take even that first step, which is a relational step of relating to God, knowing Him on a personal level, and allowing yourself to be known by Him, you really never will understand the Christian faith at all. And that applies in step one to step a hundred thousand to all of us. Whatever we may already know of God in relationship, trust me, there is always more to know and more to understand and more to relate to. I use this example as a lead-in to our gospel reading, one, because this really ought to be our disposition and orientation as we approach Scripture on any occasion, on every Sunday, when we hear the readings, or when we're sitting alone and we're reading from a Bible ourselves, which the more the better, we ought to be coming with the hope and the expectation that we don't just extract some principles or lessons to believe in, but that we are actually coming into an encounter with God Himself, and that this is the way, the means by which God has chosen to make himself known. And so we have to listen and observe and learn. Who is he? What is he like? What does he like? What does he dislike? What is what is what are his attributes? What is his character? What are his plans? All of these sorts of questions open up to us realms of possibility of coming to know someone. In the same way that we might relate to a fellow person and get to know them. This has to be done in relationship. So, as we approach this gospel text here, I would like to share a brief outline of some ways that God seems to me, that I will share for you, to be on offer for us today. And I'm really just handling the first half of our reading, but there's plenty for us to consider and digest. First, we see in these few short verses the activity of Jesus. What Jesus is doing? What is he up to? Secondly, we see on offer the affections of Jesus. What is he thinking and feeling internally? And thirdly, we see something of the aspirations of Jesus. What is Jesus aiming at? What is his goal and his mission that he intends to accomplish? So we have activity, affections, and aspiration. Let me take them in that order. First, the activity of Jesus. What is Jesus doing? Well, we are given a shorthand response to that question. In summary, we're told that he was going throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every affliction. That is to say, Jesus was going about seeking to make God known in both word and in deed. It's quite simple, actually. Teaching, preaching, healing. And he did this everywhere, and on every occasion he had the opportunity. As we read more of the gospels throughout the year, we understand that we see Jesus doing this at weddings, at funerals. He gathered around dinner tables with people, seeking to share God. He preached to them in fields, he taught in their synagogues, as we've read. He stood in boats, he taught in cities and villages. He went up on mountains, he taught them in valleys. He took long walks with his disciples and taught them about God. He stood before councils of people and gave, bore testament and witness to God. He even encountered people in quiet one-on-one occasions with would-be disciples like Nicodemus in order to share God with them, to share himself with them. Jesus used every opportunity, every setting to scatter the good seed of his good news, namely that he himself is the long-awaited for, long-anticipated, long hoped for king. That he's it. And that upon his arrival, he has come to usher in his kingdom into a fallen, broken, darkened world. And so as Jesus went out proclaiming his kingship and his kingdom, we see him inviting people, all people, inviting people to join in, not as loyal subjects to be dominated, as other earthly kings might do, but rather as royal citizens to join in and to participate and to be a part of his kingdom, and to follow the way of love, to love one another and to be loved by God. Jesus is actively seeking a people who will come to look to him in a new way, who will come to trust in him in a deeper way, and who will come to love him in a sincere way as their king, as their Lord. And it's not just a one-way street, it's a two-way street. This same people will come to see that this God, this Jesus, also in return sees them, loves them, and wants to provide for them. And so we see the activity of Jesus manifest in a myriad of ways throughout the gospel records. We see, and I would just add that all of these have both physical and spiritual dimension to them. He goes about illuminating the blind, healing the broken and the afflicted, forgiving the guilty, freeing the enslaved, feeding the hungry, raising the dead, seeking and finding the lost. And as we read and know, back then there was certainly no shortage of need, and the same is really true for us today. Some receive and come and believe, but there are still plenty more who have not come, who have not seen, and who do not believe. And as I think on that possibility of unbelief, I think that there are two ways that people primarily miss the activity of and ministry of Jesus. First, it's common for some people, for many people, to have misconception, a misconception about his activity. What is Jesus doing? It's very common for people to walk away with the impression that really when you boil it all down, what's on offer in this book we call the Bible is really just a series or a bunch of lessons. Lessons for your life. And if you follow these lessons, they might work like a 10-step program and you'll lead a better life. Or a little more pointedly, people chalk this all up to a rule book, that as long as you follow the rules and you do what you ought to do and don't do what you ought not to do, so long as the balance tips in the favor of doing more than you ought to do, that all will be well and all will be good. And that's really what God cares about. When really, in actual fact, that has nothing to do with the activity of Jesus at all, at any point. Jesus is going far deeper than that, penetrating into hearts, into conditions that are not just confused, but that are sick, that are in need of healing. Secondly, well, on the one hand, it's possible to have a misconception about Jesus, but it's also possible, secondly, to have a misjudgment of our own state of need, our own condition of need. And here I might just quote Jesus for us. It was Jesus himself who said to a group of people who were standing in their own righteousness, hoping in their own righteousness, he said to them, Look, guys, I have not come for those who are well and who have no need of a physician, but rather I have come to seek, to find, to call those who are not just lost, who are lost, but who are sick, who are sin sick, who are broken, who are hurting. Jesus came to offer far more than spiritual lessons and rules, and he also came to offer far more than we may be prepared to admit that we have need of ourselves. And unless we see that, we ourselves may be in that category of the confused, misconceiving Jesus, misjudging ourselves. To quote Jesus again, he said on another occasion, I have come so that you may have life. Not a little encouragement, not a little direction, not a little comfort, but nothing less than life and that in abundance, which implies that without him, the life we think we have, physically speaking, is really no life at all, if it's void of the spiritual life that Jesus offers. So there we have it. We must have a proper assessment and an understanding and perspective of the activity of Jesus if we ourselves are to have a share as recipients in what Jesus is offering. Secondly, the affections of Jesus. What is Jesus feeling? And here we see principally one, Matthew tells us not only what Jesus is doing externally in his ministry, in terms of outward acts, teaching, preaching, healing, but he also gives us a rare, privileged insight into what was going on internally inside of Jesus as he went about doing what he was doing. And in a word, Matthew essentially tells us here that Jesus cared. He cared for people deeply. Our translation today says when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them. Other translations may render it as deep pity for people or a deep sense of sympathy for them. In the Greek, this word here carries the force of a deep inward yearning for someone, a deep even a groaning for someone and for their good. Jesus, in this word, we're told, was moved inwardly on a heart level, on a gut level for people. In the ancient world, it was the innards, the in the innards, such as primarily the heart, that was seen to be the seat of the emotions. And we see here that Jesus, Jesus' heart was engaged for the people. You've probably seen enough doctors in your life to be able to compare and contrast some bedside manners. And you know when you have a doctor in the room with you who truly, sincerely cares for you. And you may know the difference with one who doesn't, and the difference that that makes. It matters. It may not be a doctor, it may be a counselor or an advisor of some sort in your life. When someone cares for you, we all have a degree, some degree of emotional intelligence that we begin to pick up on this. And we see subtle cues and clues, even nonverbal. It's clear when someone really truly cares for you. Whatever this looked like in Jesus' ministry, I don't know. But people knew that he cared. In Christ, you and I can rest assured that we have a great physician, as he takes the title upon for himself, a great physician of souls who cares deeply for you. Which leads us to conclude that Jesus' head was connected to his heart, and his heart was connected to his head. He wasn't just concerned, going back to the beginning here, of just spouting out some ideas, some concepts or thoughts about God, but rather on a heart level, he wanted that truth that he was proclaiming in his teaching ministry and his preaching ministry to enter into the hearts of people so that it informed their life on a transformational level. Thirdly and lastly, we see in this passage something of the aspiration of Jesus, the intent, the aim, the goal. What was Jesus after? And here, for sake of time, I may just go ahead and jump to a point of application here, but we'll notice that Jesus, when he looked out upon the crowds and he felt compassion for them, he then turned to his disciples and he said, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray therefore earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. There's two things I know about harvesting. One, the harvest does not come to the harvester. The harvester has to go to the harvest. I learned that one summer picking grapes. It's not enough to sit in the shade and kick back and relax and hope that the grapes come in. You gotta go get the grapes. And Jesus is preparing his disciples to say, Look, I'm sending you. For that matter, the word send here also carries a force with it. It's not in the sense of like sending a letter in the mailbox. It actually means to be thrown out. That that God is, pray that God would foist out, throw out, expel you in a way into the harvest. Because there's a part of you that doesn't want to do this work. Which leads me to say the second thing I know about harvesting, harvesting is hard work. It's not easy. Again, Jesus is preparing his disciples for this work, for this labor. And if you think harvesting grape and grain is hard, grapes and grain is hard, think about human souls seeking and finding those who are broken, lost, beaten, weathered, in need of what Jesus offers. If we are to do that, or if we are to be a part of that at all, we ourselves have to come to see Jesus for who he is. What is he doing? What is he f what does he feel so that we can cultivate the same heart for people? What are his goals? Who is he? And I'm of the mind that the more we see of Jesus ourselves, the more prepared we will be to go out and share him with others. And so to that end, let me just close in a prayer. Almighty God, we have the great privilege and opportunity to read and not just read for lesson's sake, but to see you and know you more deeply in relationships. May we come to know you more deeply in our own lives, so that we may go out and continue to make you known to those in need. Through Christ we pray. Amen.