SPEAKER_00: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_01: Please take your Bibles with me this morning or your devices and turn to Matthew chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: This morning we find ourselves in walking through Matthew's gospel at the end of this ninth chapter, beginning in verse 35.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bible, I will read from verse 35 through verse 38 if you would like to follow along.
SPEAKER_01: It says, 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.
SPEAKER_01: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: Then he said to his disciples, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: I have a very difficult task in front of me this morning that in first service I did not succeed at.
SPEAKER_01: And that is trying to get through all of my notes for this passage.
SPEAKER_01: A difficult situation here for a preacher and trying to figure out how do you preach through this?
SPEAKER_01: Because originally I was going to preach all the way through chapter 10, verse 15.
SPEAKER_01: 19 verses.
SPEAKER_01: Can you believe it?
SPEAKER_01: In one Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_01: But I decided, no, I can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: Because as I was studying and praying, there's just so much here in these four verses that it would be a travesty to pass over them that quickly.
SPEAKER_01: And in reality, what I'd like to do is to preach three different sermons this morning.
SPEAKER_01: Now you see why I couldn't accomplish it in the first service.
SPEAKER_01: Three different sermons that really kind of all tie together in a unique way because this is a transition passage.
SPEAKER_01: We are moving from one section in Matthew's gospel to another section, and these four verses then tie together both of those units.
SPEAKER_01: So we sort of have the first verse, verse 35, pointing backwards to what we've just gone through in chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 36 is the transition itself.
SPEAKER_01: And verse 37 and 38 look ahead to what's happening in chapter 10.
SPEAKER_01: Now we could look at this section then from three different perspectives.
SPEAKER_01: We could look at it from the perspective of Jesus' disciples, because they're about to get sent out into Israel, out on ministry assignment without Jesus for the first time.
SPEAKER_01: We could look at it from their perspective.
SPEAKER_01: We could look at it from the perspective of the crowds.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is surrounded by crowds.
SPEAKER_01: And in the middle section there, in the transition itself, it's seeing the crowds that impacts Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Or we could look at it from the perspective of Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_01: And that's the one that I would like us to focus on this morning is the perspective of Christ Himself.
SPEAKER_01: Because I think it's really most faithful to the text.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew is telling us, first and foremost, about Jesus the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: So asking what the passage says about Jesus is the most faithful that we can be to Matthew's intention.
SPEAKER_01: And this is a very descriptive text.
SPEAKER_01: That is, it fits a very particular context.
SPEAKER_01: It fits a particular place and a particular time in history.
SPEAKER_01: And those parameters set the stage for what Jesus says.
SPEAKER_01: But we weren't there.
SPEAKER_01: We weren't in the crowds.
SPEAKER_01: We weren't among the disciples hearing this.
SPEAKER_01: Or 2,000 years later.
SPEAKER_01: So that can maybe make the application of this text a little bit trickier.
SPEAKER_01: But I trust that as we go along, it will become clearer to us.
SPEAKER_01: So let's just start at verse 35.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 35 is from Jesus' perspective, a summary of the Lord's ministry.
SPEAKER_01: But the summary is not just telling us what's happened, it's also pointing us in a new direction, saying there's something else coming.
SPEAKER_01: There's a new focus that is ahead of us.
SPEAKER_01: Now you might ask the question: how do we know that this is a transition?
SPEAKER_01: Well, look back with me at chapter 4 of Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: This verse in particular is almost identical to what we find at the beginning of Jesus' ministry in Matthew 4, beginning in verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: It says, And he that is Jesus went throughout all of Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people.
SPEAKER_01: It's almost identical to chapter 9, verse 35.
SPEAKER_01: We have the three major elements: teaching, preaching, and healing.
SPEAKER_01: We have this scope of going everywhere, throughout every village and every city, from place to place to place.
SPEAKER_01: So chapter 4 tells us this is when it started.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 9 tells us this is when this particular aspect is concluding.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4 is immediately after the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: He's baptized, he's filled with the Spirit, and he heads out and begins his public ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 4 is immediately before the Sermon on the Mount.
SPEAKER_01: Before the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus proclaimed this message.
SPEAKER_01: If you're still in chapter 4, verse 17.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus began to preach, saying, Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.
SPEAKER_01: Why was the kingdom of heaven at hand?
SPEAKER_01: Why that particular element?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it was at hand because Jesus is the promised one who would fulfill all prophecy.
SPEAKER_01: It's at hand because Jesus is Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: Remember chapter 1, verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: You shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us.
SPEAKER_01: It was at hand because Jesus is the promised king of the kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: The kingdom of heaven is here because the king is present.
SPEAKER_01: How do we know that Jesus is the Messiah, the King?
SPEAKER_01: Well, we know because of this threefold element of his ministry: teaching, proclaiming, and healing.
SPEAKER_01: Those are three aspects of the Messiah's ministry.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, if you're back in Matthew, turn to Luke chapter 4.
SPEAKER_01: Matthew doesn't include this particular element.
SPEAKER_01: We see it in Luke, where Jesus was in that first part of his ministry, and he goes to his hometown of Nazareth.
SPEAKER_01: And he arrives at the synagogue on the Sabbath day and was often the pattern.
SPEAKER_01: They would hand the visiting rabbi the scroll for the day, and it was the scroll of Isaiah, and he would read from it and then sit down and teach.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus unrolls this scroll and he finds this particular passage from Isaiah 61 in your Bible.
SPEAKER_01: And he reads, The Spirit of the Lord, verse 18, is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
SPEAKER_01: He sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
SPEAKER_01: And he rolls up the scroll, he gives it back to the attendant, he sits down and he says, This is now fulfilled in your hearing.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 61 is one of the servant songs, where God is prophetically looking forward to a particular individual who will fulfill his purposes.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus fulfills that scripture.
SPEAKER_01: His teaching, his preaching, his healing fulfills the messianic expectations that were expressed in the prophets and that were expected to be seen among the people.
SPEAKER_01: And as he did so, as he went teaching and preaching and doing all of the amazing miracles that we've seen in chapter 8 and chapter 9 of Matthew, he was providing proof of his identity.
SPEAKER_01: Because everybody knew from their time in the synagogues, from their time in church, they knew this is what the Messiah is going to do.
SPEAKER_01: He's going to teach, he's going to preach, he's going to heal.
SPEAKER_01: So what does Jesus do?
SPEAKER_01: Teaches, preaches, and he heals.
SPEAKER_01: In fact, remember, look over in Matthew chapter 11, when John the Baptist was in prison, he was a little uncertain about how things were going.
SPEAKER_01: You know, when you arrive in prison, things are a little bit different.
SPEAKER_01: So he's uncertain.
SPEAKER_01: And he sends his disciples to Jesus to say, Hey, are you really the one that we should be looking for?
SPEAKER_01: Am I right about this?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus says in chapter 11 of Matthew, verse 4, go and tell John what you hear and see.
SPEAKER_01: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says to John, John, you know what to expect.
SPEAKER_01: Here's what people are seeing and hearing.
SPEAKER_01: Those elements, then, provide proof of Christ's identity.
SPEAKER_01: They provide confirmation of his message, they provide authority for his commands.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine being one of those 12 disciples and being sent out to go minister among the villages and the cities of Israel all by yourself without Jesus for the first time.
SPEAKER_01: Would you do it?
SPEAKER_01: But they do it because Jesus gives commands and he has authority behind those commands, all provided because of this threefold ministry, teaching, proclaiming, and healing.
SPEAKER_01: But what really stands out in all of this is Jesus' submission to the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is submitting to the revealed Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Think about it.
SPEAKER_01: We've already seen how many times Christ fulfilled the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: Just walk with me through this.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter one.
SPEAKER_01: Going to be flipping pages a lot this morning.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do less preaching and just reading of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I can't promise the less preaching part.
SPEAKER_01: Forgive me, please.
SPEAKER_01: Chapter 1 of Matthew, verse 22.
SPEAKER_01: After Mary is told that she will bear a son, Joseph is told that as well and said, You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.
SPEAKER_01: All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had spoken through the prophet.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah, the virgin, shall conceive and bear a son, and you will call his name Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: Look down at chapter 2, verse 5, regarding being born in Bethlehem.
SPEAKER_01: For so it was written by the prophet.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 15 of chapter 2.
SPEAKER_01: This was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 17, this was fulfilled what was spoken by the prophet Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 23, he went and lived in Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: If you look over at chapter 4, the end, or in verse 14, after the temptations, Jesus leaves Nazareth, moves to Capernaum, so that what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.
SPEAKER_01: Again and again and again, and this continues on through Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Christ fulfills what was spoken in the prophets.
SPEAKER_01: That's not all.
SPEAKER_01: If you're still in chapter 4, notice his dedication to scripture in temptation.
SPEAKER_01: Three temptations, right?
SPEAKER_01: We've looked at this.
SPEAKER_01: Make stones become bread.
SPEAKER_01: Throw yourself over the side of the temple and worship Satan.
SPEAKER_01: What does Jesus do?
SPEAKER_01: Each of those times.
SPEAKER_01: First he quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 8, verse 3.
SPEAKER_01: Then he quotes from Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 16.
SPEAKER_01: And then Deuteronomy 6 verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: He goes back to the Word of God and he says to Satan, No, I can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because I'm submitting to the Word of God.
SPEAKER_01: This is what God's Word says.
SPEAKER_01: This is what I must do.
SPEAKER_01: I've mentioned for several weeks Isaiah 35.
SPEAKER_01: If you have your Bible, you can turn to there just quickly.
SPEAKER_01: I've mentioned it over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: I may as well once point it out and read it.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 35.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, your God will come with vengeance.
SPEAKER_01: This is Isaiah 35, verse 4.
SPEAKER_01: Your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God.
SPEAKER_01: He will come and save you.
SPEAKER_01: And what happens when God comes and saves?
SPEAKER_01: Verse 5, then the eyes of the blind shall be opened.
SPEAKER_01: The ears of the deaf will be unstopped.
SPEAKER_01: The lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy.
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what we've been seeing in Matthew's gospel.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is submitting himself to the prophetic texts of Scripture and fulfilling them over and over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not all.
SPEAKER_01: He then goes to the top of a hillside and he preaches.
SPEAKER_01: His Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter 5, chapter 6, and chapter 7.
SPEAKER_01: He begins to submit himself to the scriptures through proper exposition by explaining this is what Scripture says.
SPEAKER_01: And then he takes it a step further and he says, I'm submitting myself to proper application of God's word.
SPEAKER_01: He says over and over again, you have heard that it was said, you have heard that it was said, but I say to you, here's what it really looks like.
SPEAKER_01: And he doesn't just preach and not do it himself, because we saw in Matthew chapter 9 in verse 13, after Jesus called Matthew, Matthew said, Hey, I'm so excited to have found Jesus, I'm going to throw a party.
SPEAKER_01: He invites all of his friends to his party.
SPEAKER_01: Who are his friends?
SPEAKER_01: Tax collectors.
SPEAKER_01: The worst version of the IRS, right?
SPEAKER_01: Nobody wants to be around them.
SPEAKER_01: And the Pharisees jump all over Jesus for doing that, but what does he say?
SPEAKER_01: Go and learn what this means.
SPEAKER_01: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.
SPEAKER_01: I came not to call the righteous but sinners.
SPEAKER_01: He said, Listen, you know Scripture says this, but you're not submitting yourselves to Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: I am.
SPEAKER_01: See every single place that Jesus submits himself to Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: That's important.
SPEAKER_01: Because that's what Matthew is showing us in that little summary in verse 35 of chapter 9.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus teaches, when Jesus proclaims, when Jesus heals, he's doing it all because it's what Scripture said the Messiah would do.
SPEAKER_01: As the divine Son of God, Jesus was not free to determine the parameters of his ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Think about that.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus couldn't come to earth, take on flesh, and dwell among us and do whatever he wanted to do.
SPEAKER_01: He was constrained to the parameters of the word of God because it's first of all a matter of his identity.
SPEAKER_01: He is the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that what John tells us in John chapter 1?
SPEAKER_01: In the beginning the word became flesh, he's the incarnate word.
SPEAKER_01: If the word takes on flesh and dwells among us, he cannot not be the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: And if he is the word of God, it then moves to becoming a matter of character.
SPEAKER_01: If he does not do his word, if he does not fulfill his word, then he's not faithful to his word, and he's a liar.
SPEAKER_01: And we ought to all go home.
SPEAKER_01: It's a matter of his own purpose.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is going to accomplish the divine plan established before the creation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: Beloved, we must submit to the word of God at all times, no matter the cost.
SPEAKER_01: We must be defined by the word of God, not just as a church, but as individuals within the church.
SPEAKER_01: We must obey the word for his glory and for his ends.
SPEAKER_01: That's what disciples do.
SPEAKER_01: That's who disciples are.
SPEAKER_01: You've probably heard the account of Martin Luther when he was.
SPEAKER_01: I was about to say invited, but invited isn't the right word, more like ordered, by the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V to appear at the Diet of Verms to defend himself.
SPEAKER_01: No, that's not not having a diet of worms.
SPEAKER_01: That's verms is the place, and the diet is the gathering of officials and scholars and pastors, because they had read everything that Martin Luther had written, they had heard of his teaching, and they ordered him to appear before this council to recant all of his views.
SPEAKER_01: Martin Luther responded, James Ekman in his book Exploring Church History writes it this way unless I am convicted of error by the scriptures to which I have appealed, and unless my conscience is taken captive by God's word, I cannot and will not recant of anything, for to act against our conscience is neither safe for us nor open to us.
SPEAKER_01: Here I stand, I can do no other.
SPEAKER_01: May God help me.
SPEAKER_01: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That ought to be every church and every disciple of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Here I stand upon the word of God, I can do no other.
SPEAKER_01: God help me do it.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: That's what we see in his going from place to place, in his teaching, and his proclaiming and his healing.
SPEAKER_01: He said, This is what the word of God says, therefore I submit myself to it.
SPEAKER_01: That's sermon number one.
SPEAKER_01: Sermon number two, verse 36.
SPEAKER_01: When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless.
SPEAKER_01: Like a sheep without a shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: Here we see Christ as the compassionate shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: Christ as the compassionate shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: He looks out and he he sees these crowds.
SPEAKER_01: And the crowds were gone for a while.
SPEAKER_01: They appear back in verse 33.
SPEAKER_01: Then again in verse 36.
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus sees the crowds, and the crowds elicit a gut reaction.
SPEAKER_01: That's what compassion is all about here.
SPEAKER_01: This word that Matthew chooses here is one that speaks of having your guts torn apart because of what you're seeing.
SPEAKER_01: It's a gut level, an e visceral sort of reaction.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because he's looking at people and they're harassed and they're helpless as if they didn't have a shepherd to care for them, to protect them, to guide them.
SPEAKER_01: Two words used are harassed and helpless.
SPEAKER_01: Harassed.
SPEAKER_01: Both of these words, our English terms don't really give the full effect.
SPEAKER_01: Harassed was a word that originally meant to be flayed.
SPEAKER_01: To be flayed.
SPEAKER_01: You know what that means?
SPEAKER_01: It means to be beaten and whipped to the point of your skin falling.
SPEAKER_01: It came to mean eventually something less intense, to be bothered, to be harassed, to be troubled, but always with a violent connotation.
SPEAKER_01: Not just that somebody's pestering you, but that there's violence involved in it.
SPEAKER_01: Helpless is a word that means to be thrown down.
SPEAKER_01: Again, with a connotation of violence.
SPEAKER_01: You see this at play in Acts chapter 22 and verse 23.
SPEAKER_01: The apostle Paul has returned to Jerusalem for the last time, and the Jewish crowds are all stirred up because of who he is and what he represents.
SPEAKER_01: And it says, as they were shouting and throwing off their cloaks and flinging dust into the air, they are angry.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus looks at these crowds and he says, You've been treated violently.
SPEAKER_01: As if no one's there to lead you, to protect you, to guide you.
SPEAKER_01: There's no evidence of proper care.
SPEAKER_01: No evidence of protection, no leading among the people who are called sheep here.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't take much to look today at the huge gatherings of protesters or rioters or even large political gatherings and get that same feeling.
SPEAKER_01: Just look sheep without shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: But in reality, this is a condemnation on the leaders of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: Imagine being one of the priests and having Jesus say to you, Your sheep are dying, and you're doing nothing.
SPEAKER_01: The priests are behind this, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, all the leaders of Israel are behind this because the spiritual state of Israel was directly linked to the spiritual state of her leaders and their submission to the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: It's the same thing for us.
SPEAKER_01: The spiritual state of the church is often linked to the spiritual state of her elders.
SPEAKER_01: Last time we looked at Matthew chapter 23, where Jesus rails against these leaders.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Woe to you, woe to you, woe to you.
SPEAKER_01: You are condemned.
SPEAKER_01: You're condemned over and over and over again.
SPEAKER_01: Not only just condemned, he says, listen, you take people who want to be in God's flock, and you take them with you to hell.
SPEAKER_01: These are sheep without shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: But this is really a continual problem.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a new one.
SPEAKER_01: It goes all the way back in your Bibles to Numbers chapter 27.
SPEAKER_01: In Numbers 27, Moses is about to die.
SPEAKER_01: And he knows it, God's told him.
SPEAKER_01: But he recognizes that if he dies, then Israel is going to be left without a leader.
SPEAKER_01: And so he asks God to appoint somebody to lead them so that they may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: You see, this was an agrarian society.
SPEAKER_01: It was a world in which sheep and shepherding were common knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: Everybody, from the top to the bottom, understood what sheep without shepherds were like.
SPEAKER_01: They understood that if you take away the leadership of the shepherd, you doom the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: They knew this, they understood this.
SPEAKER_01: But it speaks not so much to the absence of leadership.
SPEAKER_01: When Jesus said this, there were leaders galore.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't speak so much to the absence of leaders, but to the kind or the quality of leaders.
SPEAKER_01: It's as if there is no leadership present.
SPEAKER_01: The harassment and the violence poured upon the sheep is the opposite of good leadership.
SPEAKER_01: It's an ancient, ancient problem.
SPEAKER_01: Go with me back to Isaiah.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 56.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 56, beginning in verse 10, it says, God's watchmen are blind.
SPEAKER_01: They are all without knowledge.
SPEAKER_01: They are all silent dogs.
SPEAKER_01: They cannot bark.
SPEAKER_01: If you have a watchdog, what do you want it to do?
SPEAKER_01: At the very least, you want it to growl and bark, right?
SPEAKER_01: God says, Here, I've set up watchmen, and they're just like silent dogs who can't bark.
SPEAKER_01: Instead, they're dreaming, they're lying down, they're loving to slumber.
SPEAKER_01: They have a mighty appetite, but they never have enough.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 11, but they are shepherds who have no understanding.
SPEAKER_01: They have all turned to their own way, each to his own gain, one and all.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah chapter 10.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 10, verse 21.
SPEAKER_01: For the shepherds are stupid.
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, moms and dads, for your children that you don't want that said in their hearing.
SPEAKER_01: That's just what my Bible says.
SPEAKER_01: For the shepherds are stupid.
SPEAKER_01: Why are they stupid?
SPEAKER_01: Because they do not inquire of Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore they have not prospered, and all their flock is scattered.
SPEAKER_01: More significant than that is Jeremiah 23.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 23, verse 1 Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture, declares Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: Therefore, thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people.
SPEAKER_01: You have scattered my flock, and you have driven them away, and you have not attended to them.
SPEAKER_01: That's the kind of care that they give.
SPEAKER_01: Since you have not attended to them, behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah 50.
SPEAKER_01: Just the number of these kinds of passages in the book of Jeremiah gives you a hint as to what Jeremiah had to deal with as a prophet.
SPEAKER_01: Jeremiah chapter 50, verse 6.
SPEAKER_01: God says, My people have been lost sheep.
SPEAKER_01: Their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains.
SPEAKER_01: From mountain to hill they have gone, they have forgotten their fold, and all who have found them have devoured them.
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing new here.
SPEAKER_01: It goes on.
SPEAKER_01: You can look at Ezekiel 36 for another extended example of God who says, I have put you in a place of shepherding my people, but you've done nothing.
SPEAKER_01: And instead, my people are harassed and helpless.
SPEAKER_01: Violence is done to them.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus looks at the crowds and says, Yeah, that's what I see.
SPEAKER_01: That's what I see.
SPEAKER_01: Now we know, right, John chapter 10?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says in John chapter 10, I am the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: I am the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Israel had shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: They had shepherds who weren't caring for the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus says, I am the good shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: And that too is a submission of Christ to the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Look back at chapter 23 of Jeremiah.
SPEAKER_01: We stopped a little short of this because God begins to change his tone.
SPEAKER_01: In verse 3 of Jeremiah 23, he says, I'm going to gather the remnant of my flock.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to bring them back to their fold.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 4, I'm going to set shepherds over them who will care for them.
SPEAKER_01: Then in verse 5, Behold, the days are coming, declares Yahweh, when I will raise up for David a righteous branch, capital B.
SPEAKER_01: And he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land.
SPEAKER_01: In his days Judah will be saved, and Israel will dwell securely, and he will be called by this name.
SPEAKER_01: Yahweh is our righteousness.
SPEAKER_01: Look over at Isaiah chapter 40.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah forty.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, his reward is with him and his recompense before him.
SPEAKER_01: He will tend his flock like a shepherd.
SPEAKER_01: How does a shepherd, a genuine shepherd, care for his flock?
SPEAKER_01: He gathers the lambs in his arms, he carries them, he gently leads them.
SPEAKER_01: He doesn't do violence to them.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 49.
SPEAKER_01: Again, this is all over your Bibles.
SPEAKER_01: We could go on and on and on about this.
SPEAKER_01: Isaiah 49, verse 13.
SPEAKER_01: Break forth, O mountains, into singing.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because Yahweh has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted.
SPEAKER_01: What does Matthew 9 36 say?
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus had compassion.
SPEAKER_01: And then Jesus' compassion motivates a response.
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 10, he sends out his disciples.
SPEAKER_01: And as he sends them, he tells them in verse 6 of Matthew 10, go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Listen, there's lost sheep everywhere in this country.
SPEAKER_01: Go be shepherds, because the shepherds that have been shepherds are not shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus' compassion doesn't just stay there.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm going to do something about this.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give my people shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: We know from John 10 in that passage about the Good Shepherd that the Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, right?
SPEAKER_01: That's what Jesus did.
SPEAKER_01: He laid down his life for the sheep.
SPEAKER_01: But he didn't stop there.
SPEAKER_01: This again was a specific place and a specific time.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is preparing his disciples to go out and to be shepherds to those lost sheep, to bind their wounds, to heal them, to care for them, to shepherd them.
SPEAKER_01: But what about us?
SPEAKER_01: We weren't there.
SPEAKER_01: Some of you are old, but you're not that old.
SPEAKER_01: You're not in the crowd.
SPEAKER_01: You're not among those disciples.
SPEAKER_01: So what about us?
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's an interesting thing that the good shepherd does.
SPEAKER_01: After he laid down his life for them and he rose again from the dead, he sent his disciples out and he began to build his church, right?
SPEAKER_01: Ephesians chapter 4, verse 11, and he that is Christ gave the apostles, he gave the prophets, he gave the evangelists, he gave the shepherd teachers.
SPEAKER_01: See what's happening?
SPEAKER_01: Jesus establishes his church and he says, I'm gonna give you shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: He gives specific people to be shepherds to his church.
SPEAKER_01: That's why the Apostle Paul, as he gathered the elders of the church of Ephesus together for the last time in Acts chapter 20 and verse 28, he gathers them together.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Listen, this is the last time I'm gonna see you.
SPEAKER_01: They hug and they cry, do they do all that good stuff?
SPEAKER_01: And then he warns them.
SPEAKER_01: It's a fascinating passage of scripture.
SPEAKER_01: He says, Pay careful attention to yourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Speaking to the church elders, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God.
SPEAKER_01: 1 Peter chapter 5 continues that where the elders are given a command to shepherd God's church.
SPEAKER_01: We are given a warning in Jude verse 11 about false shepherds rising up from among ourselves.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus has prepared the way for his church to be comforted through the compassion of Christ Himself, because shepherds that he has given them shepherd them rightly.
SPEAKER_01: Let's say it another way.
SPEAKER_01: When we talk about compassion in Matthew, to extend compassion to somebody, to be compassionate, that generally points to something wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Something improper, something inappropriate, something's not right.
SPEAKER_01: And so you are compassionate towards another or towards a situation.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus is compassionate towards the sheep, but he's condemning towards the false shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: He will become more specific about that as time goes on.
SPEAKER_01: And so his primary emphasis as time goes on is to fulfill Moses' request for Israel, but he does it for the church.
SPEAKER_01: He says, I'm going to give you shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: When elders and pastors of the local church fulfill their shepherding responsibility, the church experiences Christ's shepherding of his people.
SPEAKER_01: We say that again.
SPEAKER_01: God has given every local church elders to shepherd the flock of God.
SPEAKER_01: And when those shepherds shepherd according to the heart of Christ, the church, the sheep, experience the shepherding heart of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: That's part of why we've gone in a direction here of having fellowship groups led by our elders, so that they can begin to shepherd us more carefully, more specifically.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we've encouraged everyone to become a part of one of those shepherding groups so that you can experience the shepherding heart of Christ in the way that God established it for his church.
SPEAKER_01: Now we know what happens if that goes astray, right?
SPEAKER_01: The sheep become harassed and helpless.
SPEAKER_01: But when we submit ourselves to the word of God, Christ begins to work out in his people his care, his compassion, his love, his shepherding nature.
SPEAKER_01: That's sermon number two.
SPEAKER_01: Sermon number three.
SPEAKER_01: Beginning in verse 37, he says to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful.
SPEAKER_01: The laborers are few.
SPEAKER_01: So if the laborers laborers are few, then it also means that godly shepherds are few, right?
SPEAKER_01: Godly shepherds are few, laborers are few, therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers.
SPEAKER_01: Here's where we begin to seek Christ's provision.
SPEAKER_01: Remember, this is a transition.
SPEAKER_01: We're moving from a focus on Christ and his mission to instructing and sending out the disciples.
SPEAKER_01: So we saw Jesus went through all of the cities and villages.
SPEAKER_01: Then he saw all the crowds that were harassed and helpless.
SPEAKER_01: And then, as a result of that, he says to his disciples, The harvest needs laborers, go.
SPEAKER_01: In chapter 10, he sends them.
SPEAKER_01: They go.
SPEAKER_01: That's what happens.
SPEAKER_01: And there's a shift here in imagery from one of shepherding to one of farming.
SPEAKER_01: And as every farmer knows, the work of farmer is unending.
SPEAKER_01: It keeps going in the same way the work of ministry is unending.
SPEAKER_01: Shepherding is unending.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because there's always another village, there's always another city, there's always another crowd, there's always lost sheep.
SPEAKER_01: So Jesus says, I'm preparing you.
SPEAKER_01: Pray that the Lord would send somebody.
SPEAKER_01: I wonder if the disciples really understood that when they prayed for the Lord of the harvest to send somebody, they were praying that God would send them.
SPEAKER_01: So this is our situation.
SPEAKER_01: And as we see in verse 37 or verse 38, we have a couple of statements about ministry itself.
SPEAKER_01: And the first is that there's a ministry reality that is at play here.
SPEAKER_01: The harvest is plentiful.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says that.
SPEAKER_01: And he doesn't take that back.
SPEAKER_01: It's repeated again in John chapter 4 when Jesus is talking with the woman at the well, and the disciples are off buying groceries, and they come back with the groceries, and Jesus says, listen, get your eyes off the groceries and look up because the harvest is white and ready for harvest.
SPEAKER_01: The ministry reality, even for us today, is that it's time for harvest.
SPEAKER_01: Flip side of that is that there are plenty of unqualified shepherds, but genuine laborers and genuine shepherds are few.
SPEAKER_01: Now the issue is not that some are laborers and some are shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: If we go away with that, we're missing the whole point.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus makes the issue clear in John 4, I think, in that it's about the process of the Lord of the harvest.
SPEAKER_01: Some plant, some water, some weed, some sow, some reap.
SPEAKER_01: And he goes on and he says, so that the sower and the reaper may rejoice together.
SPEAKER_01: It's about the process of all of us together working in the field for the Lord of the harvest to accomplish his purpose.
SPEAKER_01: Scriptures are replete with illustrations.
SPEAKER_01: Another one is that we're a body, all of us, different parts, different pieces put together to accomplish the Lord's will.
SPEAKER_01: And that's going to be true until Christ returns.
SPEAKER_01: The harvest will be plentiful, and there will be too few genuine, godly shepherds and godly laborers to carry out the work.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus doesn't leave the disciples on that bad note.
SPEAKER_01: He gives them then a ministry solution.
SPEAKER_01: He says the solution is to send out disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Send out disciples.
SPEAKER_01: Well, how does that happen?
SPEAKER_01: Well, first it starts with prayer.
SPEAKER_01: Pray earnestly to the Lord of harvest to send out laborers.
SPEAKER_01: So apparently the Lord of the harvest has a stash of laborers.
SPEAKER_01: He has a stash of shepherds somewhere.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're in training, maybe they're in preparation, whatever the case may be.
SPEAKER_01: And he says, pray that he may send them out.
SPEAKER_01: Now the disciples obviously did that because Jesus then sent them out.
SPEAKER_01: Look at that next time.
SPEAKER_01: But there is an inherent connection between prayer and the number of godly shepherds.
SPEAKER_01: There is an inherent connection between prayer and the number of godly laborers.
SPEAKER_01: So in submission then to the will of the Lord of the harvest, pray and then be willing to go.
SPEAKER_01: This is a large part of why we say that we gather together as the Lord's church for worship, for edification, for fellowship, and we scatter to carry out the work of the ministry.
SPEAKER_01: We gather to be built up, to be encouraged and ready to go, and then we leave and we go.
SPEAKER_01: We go out into the harvest because this is the way that Christ builds his church.
SPEAKER_01: So what about us?
SPEAKER_01: Will you pray?
SPEAKER_01: Will you pray that the Lord would send out laborers and godly shepherds from us?
SPEAKER_01: But if you pray, are you willing to be developed?
SPEAKER_01: And are you willing to go?
SPEAKER_01: We want to be a developing and sending church.
SPEAKER_01: We have a history of that as a church.
SPEAKER_01: Trying to revitalize that.
SPEAKER_01: We're trying to build that up.
SPEAKER_01: Will you pray with us and will you support that?
SPEAKER_01: Will you invest yourself to be developed, to be raised up, to be sent out?
SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe it's maybe it's to the children's ministry.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's to a fellowship group.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's across the world.
SPEAKER_01: We want to develop and send out into other ministries, into new areas.
SPEAKER_01: That's a significant way to be a part of the harvest process.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe the Lord wants to work in you to send you across the street to your neighbor.
SPEAKER_01: Or next door.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe he wants to raise you up and send you out to a local ministry in town.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's down the street.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's across the world.
SPEAKER_01: The Lord of the harvest is equipping and preparing his people.
SPEAKER_01: Pray that he would send them.
SPEAKER_01: But if you pray, be ready to go.
SPEAKER_01: Will you join me in that?
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_01: Lord Jesus, use us.
SPEAKER_01: Use Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota to be a huge part of the harvesting process.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's sowing the seed somewhere.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's just doing some watering.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it's pulling weeds or actually in the harvest.
SPEAKER_01: Lord, raise up people among us, challenge us, grow us, mature us, and use us for your purposes for your glory as we together, as your people submit to the word of God and say, Yes, Lord, you're doing something.
SPEAKER_01: Use us in whatever way you see fit to the praise of your eternal glory.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.