Matthew 9:35-38 – Working for the harvest

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Is going to preach for us the passages.

Matthew 9, verses 3:35 to 38. The workers are few.

Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in the synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and illness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out the workers into this harvest field. This is okay?

Yeah. Hear me, right? Good morning, everybody. Wow, I got a lot of new faces. I need to introduce myself first, right.

And I'm doing it. A former pastor, you know, Hong Kong and served for almost 30 years. And I come here, I mean, I come to uk. It's only four years now. And praise God that we really have a plentiful Sunday this morning.

Is it? Wow. A lot of things that we heard and we are still touching on everything happening in the church. Well, when we come back to the scripture, you know, that we read about in Matthew chapter 9:35 to 38. You know, when I read this passage, I find that I have two questions on this passage.

And it comes to my mind, the first question is that our Lord talked to the disciples and told them that ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send our workers into his harvest field. Well, when I read that, I just come to my mind, is that why the Lord ask the disciples to pray or to ask the Lord of harvest to send out workers? Why the lot of the Harpers not said enough already at that time? Why? So I would need to answer this question.

I'm just thinking that when we read back to the scripture itself, you know what our Lord said, the harvest is, right? Well, the harvest in Matthew chapter nine, it quite clearly says that our Lord is seeing the cloud. The cloud needs the good news. Because the Lord preached the good news, programmed the good news, right? And then also our Lord that helped the needy, right?

They helped us. He heal the sickness. So the habit is that I would say in the Scripture, we tell us that there should be the people that need good news, and they were harassed and helpless. Well, if we read back a little bit, In Matthew chapter 4:16, you read that they describe that the people living in darkness, those living in the land of the shadow of death, that is the people, that is the harvest. That what our Lord Jesus referred to.

Right? Then we will come to see that what kind of worker our Lord Jesus want the Lord of harvest to send out, right? So we still come back to the to see what Jesus did at that time, right? Our Lord Jesus did at that time is proclaim the good news. What is the good news?

If you refer back To Matthew chapter 4:16, the good news means that they got the great light to the shadow, the great light to the darkness. That is the great light. So when Jesus proclaimed the good news, it must be referred to the great light that is Himself at that time. Is it? And of course the worker needs to help the lady like the.

Well, I watched the video, you know, today, you know that the two doctors, they really, you know, have loads and loads of challenges, you know, and how to have the living besides the gospel, besides to give them the medication. So if we come back to Matthew chapter nine, we all know that I think that at that time our Lord Jesus was on his first years of his ministry. And he is the great knight and he is the great pen to mankind, you know, as described in John chapter 1:14, the word become fresh and make his dwelling among us. And also in John chapter 3 and 16, for God so loved the world that he gave it one and only Son, that whoever believe in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. That is the breakthrough.

That is the good news. That is the salvation plan that God planned for the mankind, right? But at that time, you know that when Jesus talked to the disciples, he told them to ask God to send more worker to the harvest field. The salvation 10 was not complete. Actually, God cannot send anyone that noticed good news except Jesus himself.

Is it so? The time is coming. And I think that we all know in Matthew chapter 28, the Great Commission. And the great commission is that Jesus came to them, to the disciples and said, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And truly I am with you always to the very end of the age. Well known about this precondition. Is it so? The most interesting is that when we come back to Matthew chapter nine, verse seven, when our Lord said to the disciples to ask them, or to ask them to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers to the field. Eventually it's the disciples become the worker that the Lord of the harvest present.

Do you think that is very interesting?

At the time the Lord Jesus told the disciples, ask the Lord of the harvest to send more worker to the field. And eventually time will Be descended. What do you think about that? Why is that? Because the disciples at that time, in the Great Commission at that time, they know well God's salvation plan the great light there with three and a half years, that is Jesus.

So because they knew the good news, because they experienced the great light. Why is the great light so important? That is the hope of every human being. That is the hope of us. So that is very important.

We all experience that living. So I will ask, are we ready to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers to the harvest field? That is my question today. So will we respond as Isaiah in chapter 6, verse 8, at that time Isaiah heard a voice. Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, whom shall I send?

And Isaiah said, here I sent me.

In Matthew chapter 9, 35, 38, I have the second question is that when our Lord Jesus took the disciple to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers to the field, and he mentioned that the harvest is plentiful. The question to me is that if the harvest is really there, if the harvest as our Lord says is handy, for can the disciples see it?

The same thing is today. If our Lord or our local fan told us that harvest is plentiful, do we see it?

We have the experience of the starvation. We know well about our Lord Jesus Christ saved us. So we are the workers of hope to stand out. Do you? But the question to us was that where is the harvest?

Yeah, our wicked men always say that the harvest is there, go and go and go. I don't see that. So at that time, I think that when our Lord Jesus said that the harvest is plenty, I think the disciples see the harvest in a way because they see the cloud, like Jesus said, because the cloud is over there. But if the disciples see them as harassed and harmless like sheep without a shelter, that is very important, isn't it? So the question to me is that how can we be like Jesus can see the harvest field like what Jesus see or what Jesus saw at that time?

Or how can we like our wicked man see that half the spirit is handy or plentiful? How so? We will come back to The Matthew chapter 9 on verse 36, the word compassion.

The scripture says when our Lord Jesus Christ saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.

That is why our Lord Jesus Christ see the harvest is because he has the compassion on the crowd. And how can we have the compassion like our Lord Jesus Christ? How so? I googled that because, you know, I do take my master's degree in psychology and counselling I know you know what is the compassion or what is means by empathy but well, you can't say that way. So in a common sense.

So I Google that I see how people say, you know, how a person can be more compassionate. So when I Google that the Google tells us many reasons is why some people have more compassionate than the others. It's because of the culture or because the way that you bring up or because of genetic issues or even the mental condition. If you got a good mental condition, you know that you have more compassionate. That's what they say.

But the psychologist told us the easy way to get compassion to others and they say finding things you have in common with others, finding space you have in common with others can help you feel more aligned with them. In turn it can help you be more compassionate.

What do you think about this psychology? Did we experience this kind of experience?

Yes, well, I was a counsellor, you know, in Hong Kong and I find that why I have compassionate to my client is because when they come to me they talk something which is I have experience and I feel their challenge, I feel their difficulty, I feel their struggle. When I know that I have compassion to them then I have a different approach. If I don't feel anything about them, I can't talk with them in the way that they know I have empathy or compassion to them. So we may be more easy to have compassion on others if we have experienced similar situation in our life. So I would like to tell you a story I give two minutes for that story and if you want to know about this story you can go to Google and there is a fascinating story on this and I don't know whether you know about a story about they call that Balim line in Indonesia.

It happened in 2005-2015 and actually what happened is that nine Australian went to Indonesia and then they are drug traffickers, you know they're doing some drug trafficking and they were arrested and the two main, two main people, they call them rain leaders is called Angel Chen and Maru Sukumaru. They were arrested and they were. They were charged a death penalty as well. And if some people like to wash film, you know they recently they have a thing called buying sculpt, you know as in the cinema that it's based on this story and the two ring leader, that's what they named them, the two ring leader as the Andrew Chan and Maru Sukumaru they turned to Christ years later when they were in the back row in prison and then once they passed they Undergo an extraordinary transformation in which they discover hope, forgiveness, and power to change life. And before they go to execution, you know, a lot of people testify, you know, that they were good persons.

And one of those is the Pinson governor is Indonesian. You know, he testified that Andrew Chen and Amara Shukumaro should not be executed because of their positive influence on other prisoners. And he even described them as a model prisoner and one of the Victorian Supreme Court justice. And he also said that the reality is that if the Indonesian government go ahead and execute them, they will kill an artist and a church pastor. And some people also testify that, you know, he was.

He was in the prison and he's also a drug trafficker in Padista, Indonesia. In Indonesia. He testified that when he was in prison with Andrew Chen and Marlon Sugar Mara, they put that there in the Bible college in the Kingdom. You can see, you know, what changes, you know, in this business because of these two persons. And I would say that where is the harvest field for these two person in the prison?

The prison is his harvest field. I mean, it's a lot of harvest field for them.

And the sad side is that they finally really get executed, this true person. And I would like to revoke one statement that Andrew Chen said in reconciling his death sentence with his faith in God. Chen said, when I go back to my cell, I say, God, I ask you to set me free, not kill me. But God spoke to him and said, andrew, I have set you free from the inside out. I have given you life.

It's really impressive when he writes like that and say like that, what a witness can do. He only got 10 years or maybe nine years in Christ, but he can really have a very good testimony to all of us, right? We need to talk. I speak a bit over time already, right? I talked the last thing where I will come back to where is our harvest field?

Where is our harvest field? We must pray so that we all are different, right? Different in race. I'm from Hong Kong. You are the locals and some people from Ukraine, right?

And we are all from different backgrounds, we all from different cultures. And each of our lives have full of different challenges, difficulties, or even struggles. We have different, you know, our life different. Our challenges are different. So I would say I will share the adversity when some challenges or difficulties that we cannot get to by ourselves.

But with the help of God, we go through that. That is our experience, right? That is what we need. And we praise God that, you know, we. We need God to help us to go through all the challenges in our life because with our different experience in our life, with our world, we may have the compassion to those that are alike us.

We have the compassion that for those that like us, we may see the other skill that our Lord want us to see and what let's say Heavenly Father, thank you that you make us all different, you not make us all the same. We pray that the Holy Spirit will touch our hearts to have the compassion on others so that we can see the harvest fields that you want us to go and you want us to work on and we will answer our Lord's call. Prm. Send me in Jesus name.