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Sermon
The Gospel of Matthew

Compassionate Shepherd, Lord of the Harvest

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June 8, 2025
Matthew 9:35-38
Joshua Greever

The Person of Christ

The Gospel

Church Leadership & Eldership

Transcript

0:15Good morning. Let's, uh, let's pray together. Well, our father, we are a people who need a shepherd. We don't want to be like sheep without a shepherd. And we see in you the good and perfect shepherd. And so this morning, would you help us to see that reality more clearly, that you are our good shepherd and the Lord of the harvest. And we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Well, this morning we are continuing in our Matthew series. We're at the very end of Matthew chapter nine, and there's 28 chapters in Matthew. So we have a long way to go, but today is a bit of a, of a checkpoint in the gospel because it's the end of one section and it's the beginning of another.

1:16So it's a good time to be here to, to take a moment and pause and see what have we learned thus far. And I wanna frame today's passage by asking the question, what makes for good leadership? What makes for good leadership? Uh, what makes a leader good, healthy, helpful, effective? Well, of course there are different kinds of leaders in the workplace or, or in the school system or whatever the case may be, different goals. But I think it's, it's fair to say the mark of a good leader is someone who sees a problem accurately and then presents an effective solution for that problem, for the good of all the stakeholders involved.

2:05And conversely, it's a bad leader who doesn't do those things. He either doesn't see the problem accurately, or even if he does do that, he doesn't present an effective solution to solve the problem or he doesn't care enough about the people who are involved in that solution. And in today's passage, I think we see Jesus as the great leader. We see in Jesus, the quintessential leader, the best shepherd one who is worthy of our adoration. That's my goal today. I want you to leave adoring Jesus seeing in him one who is full of your admiration. He is not simply a leader, but the king of God's kingdom, worthy of our trust and our imitation.

3:00And we see this particularly in this way. Jesus, in our passage today, is the king, compassionate to save. If you're taking notes, that's my big idea for the morning. Jesus in our passage is the king, compassionate to save. And he stands in stark contrast to all the first century political and religious leaders that Israel experienced. He really stands out from them because he actually saw the crowds in this passage. He saw them for who they really were, the problems they really had, whether or not they knew that he discerned that accurately and had compassion on them. And out of that compassion, he worked effectively to help.

3:55Again, Jesus as king is compassionate to save. We see the kingship of Jesus initially in verse 35. We see his compassion in verse 36 and his compassion to save in verses 37 and 38. So first, look with me again at verse 35, where we see Jesus, who is the king. There's verse 35 says, in 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. This is a summary verse of Jesus's ministry. You can tell Matthew could have told us more than what he tells us in one verse. He says, Jesus went to all sorts of places throughout Galilee in all sorts of synagogues, throughout Galilee, and he was talking a lot about the gospel of the kingdom.

4:59And he was healing all kinds of people who would come to him. Matthew has not exhausted his knowledge for us of what he knows Jesus actually said and did. He's given us selective things enough for us to have a right, uh, discernment for who Jesus is. I wanna mention just briefly a couple of things about this verse. Number one, notice when Jesus opens his mouth, what does he say? It says in the verse that he talks about or proclaims the gospel of the kingdom. So Jesus is a gospel list. He wants to herald a good news message. Now, I wanna ask, why is the kingdom good news? Because think about it.

5:44If you were the enemy of a king and that king shows up and announces I'm here in the moment, your reaction probably wouldn't be, oh, that's such such good news. You know, such good news that my enemy is now king of, of the area. That's not what you're hoping to hear because he's your enemy. You see? So what is it that the announcing of God as king is actually gospel? It's actually good news. And the answer is because God's kingdom in this sense, is a redemptive kingdom. It's redemptive. John three 17, maybe you know, this verse says this, clearly God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be what saved through him.

6:36That's why it's good news. Isaiah 52, 7, how beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion your God reigns? Can you hear that language of kingship? When God comes as king in this sense, it is to bring salvation. It is to bring redemption. And Jesus is drilling deep into that message. In the first century Galilee ministry, when he opens his mouth, he's announcing redemption has arrived, the king has arrived to deal definitively with our sin, with the problem of death and the devil to restore once again God's people to himself in a new and better garden of Eden.

7:38This really is a gospel message when you think about the messages of our culture, this message, we need to know, this message of full and final redemption is better. It far surpasses any other message you will hear this week. Notice Jesus in verse 35 is also doing lots of things. He's not just saying the gospel of the kingdom is here, but also he's healing. It says every disease in every affliction. And I just wanna say we've seen this, if you've been with us in Matthew eight and nine, that's true. He's been healing all kinds of, of, of sick and afflicted people. And his healing fits with the gospel message like this.

8:22I think it testifies, it tells the truth of, or it speaks to the reality of the gospel, that Jesus really is the king of God's kingdom. If you're with us all the way back in Matthew chapter three, we were introduced to a figure called John the Baptist. John the Baptist also announced that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Well, one of the big differences we see between John the Baptist and Jesus was John never went around healing every disease and every affliction, but Jesus does. Can you see the difference between John and Jesus? Yes, John is a messenger, but Jesus actually is the king of God's kingdom.

9:03It's a signpost that Jesus is saying to those Galileans, I have come, I have come to make all things new. One final point on verse 35, notice again, it's, it's a summary verse. Matthew, I think puts a summary verse at this point in the narrative because he's pausing the narrative for us. He's pausing it because we have a structural break at this point in the gospel of Matthew. And to prove this, if you have your Bibles open, I want you to turn back just for a moment to chapter four. Go back to chapter four, verse 23. So chapter four, verse 23, and we have another summary sentence there. Listen, how close 4 23 is to our summary sentence today, it says in 4 23.

9:56And he went throughout all Galilee teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. That's just about copy and paste. Do y'all see that 4 23 and 9 35 say virtually the same thing? That means word for word almost. Why? If you're the storyteller, would you copy and paste? And I think, again, there's a bit of a pausing of the narrative here. There's a structural break, which means if I'm, if I'm right in seeing it that way, then what we have is Matthew five through nine as a section. We have Matthew five, six, and seven as the Sermon on the mount.

10:41We, we already looked at that and in Matthew eight and nine we had the healing or the miracle cycle. And I think what Matthew's making us do as the reader is pause for a moment again, it's a checkpoint in the narrative and say, has Matthew told us enough about Jesus' words and deeds for us at this point to start to see Jesus in his glory? And I think the answer is yes, Matthew has told us enough, we, we are not really left with the option of seeing Jesus as simply another religious teacher. We're we're, we're not left with that as an option after Matthew five, six and seven where the crowds recognize he was teaching as one who had authority, not as their scribes.

11:26And similarly with the healing and the miracle cycle, Jesus isn't simply a medicine man. He's not simply some, some normal doctor who's going to give you a few uh, uh, prescriptions to make it better in your life. He raised j Iris's daughter from the dead. So, so Matthew, I think is pausing their narrative to say, haven't I told you enough at this point? And there may be something to this, but I'll just observe. There are 10 miracles. Matthew tells 10, and then he moves on and there are some other miracles in the, in the gospel of Matthew. But really there's a packing of a punch, a miracle punch in Matthew eight and nine.

12:07I think Matthew would say, I could have told you more. I've told you 10. You see, and they're not like all cleansing of the leper. They're different kinds of miracles, aren't they? Haven't I told you enough to give you sufficient evidence as the reader, you can tell this guy is the king of God's kingdom. So I wanna ask you North church, if you have been with us for some weeks now, have you begun to see and embrace Jesus as king? Have you begun to see that he's a different kind of leader than what the world has to offer? He is worthy of your trust because he has all authority in Word and indeed have you asked with Jesus's disciples, what sort of guy is this that even the winds and the seas obey him?

12:59Or why does Jesus eat with tax collectors and sinners? Or why don't Jesus's disciples fast when everyone else around is fasting? Or have you said with the crowds even last week never was anything like this seen in Israel? Are you following the narrative like that? And you're thinking Jesus really is different? He really is the king. So do you see that? And do you love that? Let's look. Look in verse 36, where we see the effect of Jesus's kingship is shown in his compassion. Verse 36 says, when he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

13:47So as we turn into the next major section of Matthew's Gospel, we see an indicator of Jesus' heart. It says he had compassion. That seems like a key word here. What kind of a king is this? There's a lot of kings in this world, but what kind of a king is Jesus? He's a compassionate king. When we think about compassion, there's I think two components to it. One is an accurate discernment of the need of the need. And then secondly, there's an inward disposition to help that person in need. And you have to have both of those things. You have to have an accurate discernment or assessment of the problem, and then you have to have the inward motivation or disposition to actually help that person in need.

14:38Sometimes people have one or the other, but not both of those. So you might have a person who really wants to help, but actually they end up hurting, not helping because they don't understand the nature of the problem very well. Do you guys know, know what I'm talking about? There's that kind of thing, which that's not really great compassion. But then of course there might be the other kind of person who sees the need but has no motivation to help. And that's not really compassion either, is it? In Jesus' case, he sees perfectly the need and has an inward disposition to help. The word compassion shows up in Matthew five times.

15:16So it's not a, it's not a frequent word of the five times one's used in a parable. The parable of the unforgiving servant is still coming down the line. But the other four times the word is used. Yes, it's always of Jesus. So this is number one in Matthew, but you can be tr uh, following along in the narrative. Whenever this word compassion shows up, it's gonna be used of Jesus. He sees us as humans in our weakness, our frailty, our neediness. Do you know that about yourself? It's true of me. We are all frail. We are all needy. And Jesus knows that he sees us and he shows compassion. He heals the sick. He makes the blind to sea.

16:02He feeds the hungry. And can we say he dies for sinners? Why is Jesus compassionate in this verse? Well, it says in verse 36, because they were harassed and helpless, these crowds like sheep without a shepherd. So there's a metaphor here of, of sheep and shepherding, and the people are the sheep and they don't have a shepherd. And that's why they are harassed and helpless. The word harassed and helpless here, I think refers to their weariness of having no good leadership. Maybe you've been in a situation like this before, maybe in the workplace environment where you just go for a long time without good leadership, and that's wearying.

16:46It can deject you or discourage you. And I think that's the idea here. They feel like sheep wandering aimlessly and they feel like giving up. They're vulnerable. And I wonder if today any of you feel similar to that. You feel weary, like giving up, harassed, helpless, discouraged, dejected. What's the answer for such people? Which in one sense is all of us, what's the answer? And the answer isn't be your own shepherd. Pick yourself up by yourself. But rather, the answer is get yourself a good shepherd. Find a good shepherd. And in Israel's case, they didn't have that. They didn't have that. Their leaders, their shepherds had shirked their responsibility to care for the people of God they had neglected and were even harsh towards the people.

17:41Now, we haven't seen a ton of this yet, but uh, in Matthew 23, we're gonna hear a whole chapter of Jesus's woes of judgment because the Israel's reli religious leaders had shirked their responsibility. I'll give you a few quotes from Matthew 23. It says, the Pharisees there shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. What a terrible thing to do. That's like, that's, that's a terrible thing to do to the sheep. It says that they travel across sea and land to make a single ProSite. And when he becomes a ProSite, Jesus says, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves. They had neglected.

18:25Jesus says the weightier matters of the law like justice and mercy and faithfulness, they were inside full of greed and self-indulgence. And Jesus isn't wrong to call them blind guides, hypocrites, whitewashed tombs, and a brood of vipers. Jesus isn't wrong. They absolutely were those things. People, the people there were shepherd less in that sense, to be like sheep without a shepherd, I think is to be without good and godly leadership good and godly leadership. I wanna say this passage today is not ultimately about your pastors at the North Church, but since the word pastor means shepherd, it's probably worth saying something about what good pastoral leadership looks like.

19:16It's worth saying that we as pastors don't want to be hypocrites and blind guides to you and the brute of vipers that only hurt you. We don't wanna neglect the weightier matters of the law, and we certainly don't want to shut the kingdom in your face. We should know as pastors the word of God, and open the door to the kingdom by pointing you again and again to the good shepherd Jesus who has paved the way to the kingdom. We want you as the north church to hold us accountable, to be faithful pastors in this sense. Ultimately though, verse 36 is not about your pastors at the North Church. Ultimately the one shepherd that the North church needs is Jesus the king.

20:08He is the good shepherd like no one else can be. And I say this because that little phrase like sheep without a shepherd, as far as I can tell, when that shows up in the Old Testament, it's, it's not referring to a plurality of Israel's leaders, although I think it could apply in that way, but rather it's used primarily of the single solitary leader that Israel needs. For instance, when Moses was going to die in the book of numbers, chapter 27, Moses requests that God appoint man, not a bunch of them, amen. Over the congregation, so that Israel may not be as sheep that have no shepherd. And that's Joshua in the, in the narrative.

20:57Or later once you get to Israel's kings, like in the time of King Ahab, for instance, who is the king, king of the northern king, uh, when Ahab went on to die, Israel is described as then a sheep that has no shepherd. In other words, that phrase refers to the lack of a single, solitary, godly leader over all the people of God. And there's only one person, there's only one who can actually fill in those shoes. And that is the Lord Jesus Christ. When the prophets of Israel talk about the shepherd hope, uh, uh, of Israel, they talk about the Messiah. Uh, Vince Johnson prayed this just a moment ago.

21:42The language coming out of Ezekiel 34, I think is helpful here, where Ezekiel holds forth a promise that one day there would be a Messiah, not a bunch of Messiahs, but one Messiah who would be Israel's one shepherd. If you have been with us in Matthew, who is this shepherd? It's Jesus, isn't it? He is the one. Remember the words of the wise men back in chapter two? Where is he? Who's born king of the Jews and the religious leaders know? Well, Mike of five says it's gonna be in Bethlehem. Why Bethlehem? For from you Bethlehem, Cal Kme ruler who will shepherd my people Israel. That's Jesus, the one born in Bethlehem, the one with all authority.

22:31So I wanna I wanna push this into your heart at this moment, I, I want you to apply. Do you have need this morning of Jesus as your good shepherd? Yes, we all are in great need of this shepherd. He knows how to feed us as we need it, whether or not we know it, he knows our need. And he feeds us. He protects us. He guards us. He encourages, he knows how not to break the bruised reed. He knows how to not to quench the smoldering wick. And he says, come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Jesus doesn't shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. He opens the door to the kingdom of heaven by dying for us, by his resurrection.

23:24Trust in him alone. He won't make you a child of hell. He'll make you a child of heaven. Jesus doesn't neglect the weight here, matters of the law like the Pharisees, he embodies and enacts them perfectly. Jesus isn't full of greed. He's not full of self-indulgence. His joy is totally full and overflows in a wealth of generosity and grace toward us. He's no hypocrite. He's no blind guide, and he's certainly not a viper. He has perfect wisdom to reveal God to us. So go to Jesus if you feel weary, dejected, harassed, and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, go to Jesus. He sees you in your frailty and has compassion.

24:16He will not turn from you in disgust. He will not turn a blind eye to you or your sin. He has compassion to help. Just one word of warning here is don't make Jesus prove his compassion to you by thinking He has to show compassion in the way you think he must. So we have to be a little careful here. Sometimes Jesus shows his compassion to us by leaving the thorns in our flesh. Sometimes he sees what we really need, namely he wants to keep us from becoming conceited. And so in the moment of her harassment and weariness, he leaves the thorn in the flesh so that you won't be conceited. That's compassion.

25:08Don't ever doubt Jesus's compassion or hold him hostage to your definition of what compassion must look like in your own life. This guy laid his life down for the sheep, trust him. Well, in the end, verses 37 and 38, we come to a new metaphor where Jesus is the Lord of the harvest. Notice with me in verses 37 and 38, it says, then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Notice the switch in metaphor from the sheep shepherd image of verse 36 to the harvest image in verses 37 and 38.

25:58Uh, the metaphor of a harvest, of course, just indicates the time at which a crop is ready to reap the time at which it's ready to reap what was sewn. And it's worth noting back then, there's no John Deere tractors, there's no combine harvesters. So when Jesus says, yeah, but the laborers are few that matters, at least in first century Galilee, because all the, all the reaping was done by hand with the sickle. So at the time of the harvest, you actually need a lot of hands on deck to put the sickle in and reap together. Why harvest? Why, why that metaphor at this point, and I think the, the use of the harvest here describes the day that Jesus was talking about right then.

26:43And I think it's still true today, as the day of salvation, the kingdom of heaven has arrived. Therefore, the redemption or the salvation offered with the kingdom of heaven is also here. This is the day of salvation. Sometimes the, the image of a harvest can describe end time judgment. I think here it's end time salvation. I think there's mission to save here. I think this is what Jesus meant in John chapter four, when he says in the context of the Samaritan woman at the well, uh, he says to his disciples, look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest. I, I I think it's the same image now is the day of salvation, the times of ignorance.

27:34God overlooked. Paul says in Acts 17, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. That includes mounds view. Now is the day of salvation. Don't, don't wait till another time. Now, in the history of redemption, God has chosen to save people from all over the world. Notice Jesus says in verse 37, the harvest, how big is it? It's plentiful. Do you see that word? It's plentiful. So in other words, God has not chosen to save only a few people altogether, but rather he has chosen to save many people from all over the world. I think we see an indication of this in Acts chapter 18, where Paul goes to Corinth, Paul's trying to figure out, do I wanna stay in Corinth for a long time or not?

28:27And Jesus says, stay in Corinth for I have many in this city who are my people? In other words, I have planned to save many people in Corinth. So Paul, you stick around, you stick around. Yes, the labor's are few, it's just you, Paul, and maybe a couple of your coworkers. But there the harvest is plentiful in Corinth. And I wanna say in Minnesota, there is a problem in verse 37, the laborers are few. So if there's a big harvest, plentiful harvest, but there's only a few farmhands, that's a problem. Y'all see the problem. So the who are these workers? Uh, are these the 12 apostles? Uh, are these the vocational pastors, missionaries?

29:15I think yes to all of the above, but I do wanna say, I think the few ness of the workers is an indicator of how few Christians there are sometimes in certain harvest fields, uh, we as Christians are the workers that Jesus sends out into the, uh, into the world. Every Christian is a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of the harvest. And in one sense, even though we have different gifts and, and, and different leanings and callings and that sort of thing, I think in one sense we all are called to announce the gospel of the kingdom to those around us. The workers though are few. Do you see that the workers are few?

29:57And maybe you feel that even in a bigger church, you know, maybe you feel in your neighborhood like you're the only one, maybe in maybe on your street, you know, to, to your next door neighbors. You're the only one. The labors really are few in that sense. I wanna say something else about that in just a moment. But first I wanna head off at a potential objection. An objection could be if you know the gospel of Matthew, actually you could say, I don't think verse 37 is talking about missions and evangelism at all. Because in the very next chapter, Matthew 10, the 12 apostles are the ones that Jesus sends out.

30:37Not all of his disciples. Do you see that? And Jesus doesn't say to go to the Gentiles and to the Samaritan villages, Jesus says, only go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. In other words, griever, you're misapplying. This, you are misapplying this verse as though it's for us all, uh, today. And I wanna say my response, you know, we haven't gotten to Matthew 10 yet, but my response is that Matthew ten's Jewish mission is a prelude. It's a prelude to the great commission at the end of Matthew. It's a prelude to it. It's not at odds with it. I think if we use the harvest metaphor, I, I, I'm not a farmer.

31:16I I've gotta say that. But my understanding is that you get multiple crops, you get like bumper crops and that sort of thing. You have a first fruits and then you have the full in gathering, right? There's that sort of thing that goes on even in Israel's own calendar. You got different feasts because there's different times when you harvest. I think the Jewish mission in chapter 10 is simply the first fruits harvest. And the great commission is the full in gathering. That's my view, which you can think about that more later. And, and I think Pentecost shows that in Acts chapter two. Alright, to finish up, what do we do with the few of laborers?

31:56The few number verse 38. Therefore pray, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. So the laborers are few, that's a problem. What do we do? Notice Jesus doesn't say, go wrestle up some more workers. Go out and grab some more people and say, Hey, we need you. He actually doesn't say that. He doesn't say, hold a, hold a missions conference, make an appeal. He doesn't say, put an advertisement through social media. All these things I think are fine and okay, but that's not, not what Jesus says. What does he say? He says, pray, pray. Ask the Lord of the harvest. Not just ask anyone.

32:48Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers. And I think, don't we see the sovereignty of God here in salvation and in sending, we can't create more workers. We, we, we actually can't do that even if we wanted to, and we don't have the authority to send them. Only God has the ability to create and then send out more into his harvest. Because after all, he's the Lord of that harvest. And we are workers in the field, uh, in his field. So what do we do? We pray. We ask him to do what only he can do. And it's so easy, I think when we share the gospel with others to forget the sovereignty of God in evangelism, it's so easy for us to take matters into our own hands, to cr try to create situations that we think will make a person's conversion more conducive or maybe to man say it cer certain things in certain ways, to manipulate them, to give us the response we wanted to make the gospel message maybe more palatable to the modern audience.

33:55Let's not forget it's only God who can save. It's only God who can create a worker. On the other hand, I think it's easy to misconstrue the doctrine of God's sovereignty in salvation to mean well, there's nothing for me to do. Then Jesus doesn't say, I'm the Lord of the harvest. So y'all sit back and watch me. He doesn't say that, does he? He says, I'm the Lord of the harvest. So ask me, ask me. Pray. Jesus invites us in to participate through prayer in what he has ordained. Will infallibly happen? He has promised to save many in Corinth. So Paul, stick around, pray for them. I think practically this means prayer is the engine of this church's mission.

34:44If we exist to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things, for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ, then whatever we do, we've got to pray. We must pray individually and also corporately. Pray with urgency. Pray earnestly, plead with the Lord, with a focused intent in your heart. For more workers, for more believers to be sent out. I wanna encourage you yourself to pray for your own friends and family members and neighbors and coworkers who you think they don't know the Lord. Pray for 'em. Pray for those who live around our church in these neighborhoods, in our zip code here, that they might see the light of the gospel.

35:31Pray for the children in our church. There are hundreds of children in this church. Pray that God would remove their hearts of stone. Give them hearts of flesh. I do wanna say today, maybe you saw the email today, is Aaron Rother Mel's last Sunday as a staff pastor here at the North Church. He's still gonna be with us, he and his family here at church, but he's moving to a ministry position at Together for Good here in the Twin Cities. We're so grateful for his time over our children's ministry. So pray, pray for someone to step in. That'd be a really good prayer at this point. But also pray for all of the volunteers, a not so small army of volunteers in our children's ministry that God would raise up even more from among you, that you could be a part of our ministry, our gospel ministry to our children.

36:23One other example is pray for our global partners. We have a prayer calendar, pray for them and the different people, groups that they work among, uh, there's a group of older saints at the North church called rope holders. Maybe some of you have heard of this group. Uh, this group of older saints meets, I think on a monthly basis. I'm sure they would love for you to join them as they pray together for our global partners. Listen, if you struggle whether God actually answers prayer, I I think every Christian actually at some point kind of wonders God. Are you even hearing what I'm asking? Then I want you to remember two things, one from our passage and one observation from what I'm experiencing today.

37:08Number one, remember Jesus is the king with all authority and with a heart of compassion to save the lost. Why wouldn't you pray? Don't, don't forget who, who you're talking to. This, this is the king we're talking to who has a heart of compassion. It just said He has a heart of compassion. So pray. He, he even invites you to pray, right? Don't doubt he listens. But then secondly, I'm just observing. There are many people in this room today. I think your existence, I'm speaking to the Christians here. Your existence as a Christian actually is evidence of the truth of verse 38. There were saints and maybe in your life, or perhaps from hundreds of years ago who did not even know that Minnesota would exist, and yet they prayed God sin the gospel all over the world.

38:00And our existence here today as worshipers of the Lord Jesus actually is one clear indicator that God answered their prayer. We are the harvest, we are the plentiful harvest. So there's of course, much more work to be done, but I don't wanna stop and pause and just observe. We don't live anywhere close to the land of Israel. And I'm guessing many of us are not ethnic Jews ethnically, and yet we worship the Lord Jesus as our king isn't. Isn't the harvest actually plentiful? I think it's evidently so. So be encouraged and keep praying. Well, I'm gonna close the sermon by doing something a little bit different here since Jesus has instructed us to pray for more workers.

38:47I'm gonna spend a couple of minutes as we close the sermon praying in a more focused way in obedience to Jesus's instruction. So let's pray together. Our Father, Jesus just told us to pray. He invited us to pray earnestly for more workers. And so I want to ask even now, would you create and send out more workers into your harvest? Would you do it? Would you save and seek the lost in mounds view and in the Twin cities? And would you use our church to shine the light of the gospel? Clearly not in a fuzzy way, but clearly into their hearts. Father, we pray for at the children of the church, would they obey the gospel that they hear from their parents?

39:42Father, would their parents be clear to them on what the gospel is, the gospel of the kingdom for the other members of our family, Lord, where else can they go but to you? So draw them to yourself. Humble them, cause them to recognize you as their creator and as the only redeemer out there. Father, we pray that the parents of our church would have clarity and fortitude to bring up their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. Father, we pray for our neighbors, our coworkers, father, we see these people almost every day. We interact with them and we want them to be counted among the plentiful harvest that Jesus promised would be had.

40:25So would you seek and save them? Father, all around us, we plead. Would you make the people in our lives aware of their sinfulness, aware of the dire situation they have apart from Jesus? Would you open their eyes that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God? Would you give them, grant them the forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in Jesus? Use us for our global partners, father and the peoples to whom they minister. Would you open their hearts? Would you open those people's hearts to pay attention to the gospel they hear? Would you see to it that the word of God is not chained in all the places where our global partners seek to minister open doors into those countries and regions and cause our global partners even today, to have favor in the eyes of government officials so they can stay for years and see much fruit, a harvest of righteousness.

41:30Father, you are worthy of all praise, all honor and glory belong to you from all over the peoples of the earth. So in these ways, would you raise up and send out more workers into your harvest? Father, you've done it before. You've done it in us by your grace alone. Would you do it again? You are the Lord of the harvest. Would you do this? We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Matthew 9:35-38

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