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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. The gospel lesson for today is from Matthew nine and ten. Let's begin with this question. What if someone were to ask you to serve the church while there is still time? While there is still time. The children had just a few seconds to gather all that they could while there was still time. You and I are called to serve. In verse thirty seven, Jesus said, The harvest is plentiful, abundant, but the workers are few. These words of Jesus, the compassionate Son of Man indicate that there is an urgency connected to the work of the church. In his omniscience, and as Jesus knows all things, in his omniscience, Jesus also anticipates hesitancy on the part of those listening to his message. Urgency and hesitancy. That's the contrast. That's the contrast that the church faced then, and it is the situation today. This scripture speaks of the compassion of Jesus, the heartfelt concern he has for those who are suffering. Jesus traveled from town to town, preaching, teaching, healing, and he surveyed the crowd, and while standing on a high place with a good view of those who are following him, Jesus was motivated to care and to serve. The Greek verb in this passage means to have love and pity felt and expressed deeply from the heart. The heart is the seat of the emotions. The word tells us that Jesus felt the pain at the sight of the suffering. He desired to relieve and to remove the suffering. Yes, Jesus feels sympathy. Yes, Jesus shows kindness. More importantly, wherever and whenever Jesus sees suffering of body and soul, Jesus intervenes. He's moved by compassion to act. So he intervened as the true shepherd of those who are without a shepherd. Now the casual observer of this suffering does not see what Jesus saw. This requires a heart like that of Jesus. The sheep, as Jesus sees them, look abject, torn, exhausted by the pain of this world, of their own sinful flesh, and the enemy Satan. These sheep were not only sick and hungry and poor, their souls received no help at all, no wholesome food, no care for their souls. We have a good shepherd, Jesus. And we have an under-shepherd named Pastor Adams. He is a sales sorger in German, that is, he is a curator of souls. That's precisely what Jesus desires to do, and all who serve him, all those who are involved in the harvest field are to do. Be curators of souls. There's an urgency to the needs of those who are suffering. What if someone asked you to serve the church while there is still time? Did Jesus' first disciples see the urgency of the harvest that is abundant? Do we see it? The names of contemporary benevolency agencies suggest that someone somewhere in our world knows something about compassion. Who of us here today has not been to an urgent care? Who of us here today has not been the recipient of the kindness and the medical expertise of those in these places? Hospitals, urgent care, nursing homes. We have benefited. We are the folks who have benefited from the folks in these medical facilities, who are there on weekends and the wee hours for one purpose to benefit others. Our synod has what is called recognized service organizations, abbreviated RSOs. Now these organizations are in place for disaster response and are funded to build physical and spiritual readiness to meet the needs of the sheep. The harvest. It's already been produced. The need exists. Jesus has found them that seek him not. In Isaiah 65 , God says, I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me. I was found by those who did not seek me, to a nation that did not call on my name, I said, Here am I, here am I. He repeats this message in Romans ten twenty. Jesus asked his first disciples, and he asks us to share in his compassion. The first thing he wants us to do is mentioned in Matthew nine thirty seven. Therefore pray. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. The harvest is polos, the Greek word means much or abundant. The number of those who will be saved is large. The harvest is like a great ripe field of grain. Jesus knows his sheep, those that are his. We learn in Second Timothy two nine. They need only to be gathered in. The harvest has already been produced, and Jesus sees it. Verse nine says, Ask the Lord of the harvest. The disciples took these words of Jesus to heart, and they prayed for workers. The first way that the Lord answered their prayers was to send them out into the spiritual harvest field. They prayed sincerely and they became an answer in part to their own prayers. We saw this kind of prayer answered just a couple of weeks ago when Trinity Lutheran Church received new members into the congregation, and the week before that, when young people were confirmed in their promises at baptism and became members of this congregation. That prayer was answered. In the next section in Matthew 10, we have the account of Jesus calling and particularly sending the twelve. Now, if you want to take a look at today's gospel lesson, but let's maybe test ourselves beforehand and see if we know some of these twelve. An easy way is there are two James and there are two Simons, and we remember the guy that betrayed Judas Cariot. And then there are a couple of guys that didn't seem like they ought to be servants of Jesus, disciples. You remember Matthew, the tax collector, and Thomas, the doubter. Well, leave the rest of it to you. We've got Thaddeus and Philip and Bartholomew. That just gives you one or two yet to get. That's what happened. Jesus called the twelve disciples. He called many before the twelve, and he has called many servants since then. What if someone asked you to serve the church while there is still time? The list of Jesus' hesitant or reluctant servants is well documented. Remember Moses, he's a famous example. At the burning bush, Moses gave five excuses as to why he should not be involved in this work. Why he could not lead the Israelites out of Egypt. Do you recall one of those excuses? He claimed that he was slow of speech, and he wasn't eloquent enough to speak to Pharaoh. To put it in our modern terminology, Moses had to overcome some self-doubt. Gideon, the fifth judge of Israel, was called by an angel to rescue Israel from the Midianites. He argued that he was from the weakest tribe in the weakest family in all of Israel, and he was the least of that tribe. Do you remember what he requested of the Lord to legitimize his call to serve, to participate in the harvest? You remember it? He wanted physical signs. He wanted a fleece. Show me a fleece to confirm the calling. He had to see that fleece before he would obey. He thought he was not important or famous enough to serve. We have that in Judges 6 to 8. Prophet Jeremiah hesitated because he thought he was too young to serve in Jeremiah 1.6. Jonah responded to God's call to benefit Nineveh by running in the opposite direction. He was actually running away from God in Jonah 1.3. What if someone asked you to serve the church while there is still time? Well, if he used Moses and he used Gideon and he used Jeremiah and he used Jonah, guess who else he's ready to use? That's right. He's ready to use us. Jesus knows our situation. He knows our need, and Jesus also knows our incapacity, not our capacity, but our incapacity to serve. All Jesus' sheep will be gathered into his fold, and he will accomplish that with or without us. Satan would have us regard God's invitation to serve as a burden, the kind of burden that we ought to avoid. In contrast, the Lord graciously invites us to be involved in the kind of service that has blessed results that last into eternity. And how is God's eternal outcome so certain in the face of such urgency and our hesitation? Matthew nine and ten say God is the Lord of the harvest. God the Father controls the entire management of the harvest. God the Father put the harvest and the gathering in Jesus' hands. Jesus has deep personal concern for the harvest. Scripture speaks of God's willing, suffering servant Jesus. Isaiah describes him beautifully, and he's described throughout Scripture as one who is a suffering servant, a sacrificing servant. It is great it is Jesus' great mission to bring in the harvest. Scripture explains all that Jesus has done and will do. Jesus said, Even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Concerning the humble sacrifice of Jesus, Saint Paul writes, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Philippians two eight. The King of Heaven vacated his throne for a season. He laid aside his glorious garments, clothed himself in the humble garments of mortal man. He did this for us to rebuild our sin broken lives. Now there are many who humbly occupy roles of service in the world. Sometimes people are grateful to doctors and nurses, so grateful that we've heard them called saviors. Indeed they save health. Jesus saved his people from their sins. The angel said to Joseph in Matthew one, You shall call his name Jesus for he shall save. Zechariah called Jesus the horn of salvation in Luke two. Jesus sufficiently trained his first disciples to join him in his compassionate concern for the lost sheep. He taught them how to put on his and their own gardening gloves for the ingathering. He showed them the need for more laborers. He moved them to pray for more laborers. The harvest is God's, and God must provide the workers. Ichbaline is the Greek word. He must throw them, he must hurry them out into the harvest. There is an artwork Virgin Madonna of the Rocks. It was painted in two versions by Leonardo da Vinci. It portrays the woman Mary, the child Jesus, John the Baptist and an angel kneeling next to a rock. Several similar paintings have been based upon Da Vinci's work. A nineteenth century episcopal clergyman and artist named Johannes Ertel did an oil painting of a woman clinging to a cross planted on a rock. This inspired still another painting called Rock of Ages Hold on my child. This one portrays a woman holding, clinging to the cross, and with that one hand clinging and holding to the promises of God and all that that cross accomplished, and with the other hand reaching out to rescue another. You and I know people who need an outstretched hand. This illustration, this painting has been used as a visual for describing and explaining the meaning of the second petition of the Lord's Prayer. You remember that petition? Hallowed be thy name is the first, and the second is thy kingdom come. Luther said the kingdom of God comes indeed without our prayer of itself, but we pray in this petition that the kingdom may come among us also. This petition is a missionary prayer. We like the first disciples are doing our part. We're asking that the kingdom of grace may come one into my heart, two into the hearts of others, and three that all would be gathered to glory, just as we sang in our sermon hymn. This is what Jesus taught his disciples to do. Pray the Lord of the harvest. We ask God of this. We know that this is his will. We know that he will hear our request. He is the one who in his own way will find and send out the workers. He is the primary cause. Our prayers are secondary. He uses us and our prayers. It's a sweet mystery, isn't it? When we pray, he hears us and he answers and he prompts others to do particularly what the second petition cites. God's kingdom is coming. There's a blessed relationship between the workers in the harvest and the Lord of the harvest. When one note is struck, the other responds, By God's pure word we are keyed in, so that our labors are offered in concert with His will. Matthew ten seven reminds us that we belong to a kingdom that is at hand and that is in progress in Jesus. Now may the peace of God that surpasses all human understanding keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to life eternal. Amen.