He affirms the central admonition drawn from Matthew 9:37–38—namely, that the harvest is plenteous while the laborers are few—and posits this aphorism as the primary missiological imperative demanding both prayerful appeal and incarnational response. Explicating thecriptural context, he delineates Christ’s palpable compassion for multitudes described as “fainting” and “scattered as sheep without a shepherd,” and he argues that such divine compassion is not mere sentiment but a catalytic motive for praxis that must translate sympathy into tangible labour. Drawing upon a personal anecdote from urban van ministry, he employs experiential hermeneutics to demonstrate how initial programmatic success can be undermined by a misaligned volition unless ministers cultivate an agapic affection for persons rather than an ecclesiastical affection for procedures. He diagnoses the principal impediment to effective evangelistic advance as a heart issue—an affective deficit that renders available laborers inert—and thus reframes the solution as theological and spiritual formation rather than merely numerical recruitment. Consequently, he exhorts the congregation to pray to the “Lord of the harvest” for the sending forth of laborers and to submit to a sanctifying reorientation in which ministry’s telos is the loving of people with Christlike compassion. Finally, he intimates that when hearts are prepared by the Spirit and aligned with God’s affections, the resultant missional outflow will engender exponential ecclesial fruit and sustained ministry efficacy. Matthew’s narrative of Jesus’ itinerant ministry becomes the hermeneutical fulcrum around which the preacher orchestrates a sermonic exegesis that privileges compassion as the telos of ecclesial praxis. He explicates the lexical nuance of the Greek and the English lexicon—compassion as a suffering-with, a pathos that is compounded with passion and love—and locates Christ’s affective response to the multitudes as the paradigmatic exemplar for ministerial orientation. From this vantage he advances an argument that juxtaposes mere religious performance with incarnational engagement: the Pharisaic adherence to ritual produced anemic souls that remained “scattered as sheep, having no shepherd,” whereas Christ’s embodied response effectuated tangible restoration. Consequently the preacher invites the congregation to reconfigure their teleology from institutional achievement to relational stewardship, insisting that genuine sympathy must transmute into operative compassion, and that prayer for laborers is not a passive resignation but an ontological petition that catalyzes missionary deployment and ecclesial mobilization.
Takeaways:
- He delineates the primacy of Christological compassion as an affective-motivational impetus that transforms mere sympathy into missional praxis, thereby obligating the ecclesial community to enact concrete evangelistic and charitable interventions.
- He explicates the hermeneutic of Matthew 9:36–38, arguing that the perceived paucity of laborers signifies a heart-oriented deficit rather than a purely logistical shortfall.
- Through an extended anecdote about urban VBS ministry, he demonstrates the epistemic transition from programmatic ambition to relationally-centered ministry, whereby love for persons supersedes numerical metrics and institutional accolades.
- He insists that authentic vocational mobilization arises from prayerful dependence upon the ‘Lord of the harvest,’ a pneumatological appeal antecedent to the commissioning and empowerment of laborers.
- He admonishes practitioners to perform iterative self-examination of motives, positing that ministerial efficacy is contingent upon affective concordance with God’s redemptive priorities rather than performative religiosity.
- He posits that the disciples’ subsequent commissioning (Luke 10; Matthew 10) evidences an ecclesiological principle: preparation of hearts precedes scalable mission deployment and sustainable kingdom expansion.
- He advocates for sustained intercessory and participatory engagement in missions, asserting that praxis informed by compassion and doctrinal fidelity will engender divine augmentation of vocational fruitfulness.
Transcript
Not that those are good things, but it's good.
That's what families do.
They get together and talk about what they need and that's what we need to do here.
And that's how we're able to get our minds off of ourself and help someone else.
So I appreciate that.
Thank you, Brother Reed.
But tonight I am honored to be able to speak tonight.
I don't take these opportunities lightly.
And really I began to pray what the Lord would have me to speak on.
And I knew exactly what he wanted me to say before I was asked.
And this was just something that's been on my heart for a while.
It's actually something I learned back.
truth that I Learned back in:And I'll explain that here in just a little bit.
But it really is not about me.
I just, I think that my story, I guess my illustrate or my experience will help illustrate this truth.
And I pray it be a blessing to you.
I do have another prayer request to add.
I didn't put it in there.
I was seeing if my wife would do it, but she didn't.
No, I'm just joking.
But my son Daniel just had all four of his wisdom teeth pulled out of his head at the same time.
And so they said that he was not mission ready with all four in there.
So now apparently he is.
But his head's about 10 gallons right now.
And so pray for him.
He's hurting and he's recovering now.
So pray for him.
And I appreciate that.
I know he'll appreciate that as well.
So open your Bibles with me.
Turn your Bibles to Matthew chapter number nine.
Matthew nine.
This is a familiar passage.
And with us just wrapping up our missions conference, our missions focus week.
This is a missions primarily focused in on mission work.
And so we're going to cover that.
And let me just remind you again how many people, missionaries and ministries are depending on us to hold the rope.
And so we have obligations to a missionary for the life of their ministry.
And, and so I would just encourage you once again to pray what the Lord would have you to do this year for missions.
And we have a big obligation and I know that God, if we are continuing God's work and we're doing it his way through the local church, God will bless.
And so just as an encouragement here, but let's read In Matthew, chapter 9, verse, we'll start in verse 35.
The Bible says, and Jesus went about in all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the kingdom and healing.
Look what it says.
Every sickness and every disease among the people, it says.
But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them because they fainted and they were scattered abroad as sheep, having no shepherd.
Then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest.
Here it is.
The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers unto the harvest and to his harvest.
Let us pray.
Lord, I pray that you calm my nerves, Lord, help me now to speak what exactly you have for us tonight.
Lord, I pray I don't get in the way tonight.
I pray that your spirit would be evident, Lord, that you would move from seat to seat, from people to people and heart to heart, Lord, and accomplish exactly what we need tonight.
Lord, help us to hear your word and respond to it accordingly.
Or may you be pleased with what you see here tonight.
I ask this in Jesus name, Amen.
So this, this compassion, this first I just want to give you some context.
You know this, but this is a way of reminding this is Jesus Christ that we're talking about.
He is speaking here.
This is the one that the Old Testament scriptures prophesied that there would be a coming Messiah.
And he would do many wondrous miracles.
Healing the sick, causing the blind to see, casting out devils.
That's what Isaiah prophesied.
So their Old Testament, they were longing for this person, this Savior, the chosen one to come.
And now he has come.
And now he is actually in chapter what's amazing about this portion of Scripture, Matthew 8, 9 and 10.
It kick starts his ministry in a way that we hadn't really seen.
We've seen the Sermon on the Mounts, we've seen some miracles.
But if you read through chapter eight and nine, it is packed full of miracles.
Jesus Christ is busy.
He is.
He is out doing the will of the Father.
And this is causing a stir amongst the people in the villages and all the things that are happening.
He's causing blind people to see.
He's causing folks that are paralyzed to get up and walk.
He's casting out demons multiple times throughout these chapters.
And this is causing a stir in the community, A following.
His fame is now spreading abroad.
And now he simply goes to deal with these two blind men.
If you read back for the sake of time, I'll paraphrase for you.
But he does this miracle, he heals these two blind men and he tells them, don't tell anyone.
And they go and tell everyone.
I wonder if we did that Say, hey, don't go out on visitation, would you do you know, I don't know, but he tells them, he tells them, don't tell anyone and they go tell everyone.
And this is beginning, this movement, if you will, is just, I mean it's really gaining momentum.
Christ is accomplishing everything that he had set out to do and he gets, and all this busyness of his ministry and all the things that are happening.
And I just wondered for a moment what it would be like to be a disciple, an apostle.
You are watching this, you are watching this man do miraculous things.
In fact, they said, we have never ever seen anything like this in all of Israel.
Now remember, Israel was in the state of, of this religious stronghold.
They have replaced God with their religion and all these people have been sold a false bill of goods.
They said, hey, you follow our religion and it will satisfy you, it will help you in your time of need.
And they said, hey, we've washed our hands, we've kept all the laws, we've ate all the food, we've done all the dietarial and the ceremonial, you know, we've kept all those and you've lied.
It doesn't fulfill.
We are worse now because we had a sense of hope than we were before youe tell us, I mean this was the frustration that was growing and these crowds were gathering and they, of course some of them wanted to come.
Just say, hey, do another one.
Hey, you know, can you do another one?
And they're following Christ as like this miracle monger.
But there were some that really loved him and began to get to know him and it made all the difference.
But this is kind of the setting of where we're at.
This is 36, verse 36.
It says, but when he saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion on them because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
Now the direct context of this is salvation.
They were lost people.
These were lost people.
But you and I know a little bit, maybe a secondary application of what it means to be without a pastor.
You and I can feel that a little bit.
You know, there's some.
That's hard.
We're in a tough spot right now.
But the primary focus is upon the lost sheep.
Okay, so look what it says.
It says, we're just going to try to break down this small portion.
So hang, stay with me and I pray this be a blessing to you.
It says, but when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion.
Now I don't know about you, but my Bible, I Have a red letter Bible.
And Jesus is not speaking here.
Okay?
Right.
Or is he?
Matthew's writing.
How did he know he was moved?
How did Matthew know that Jesus was moved to.
How did he, Matthew, no doubtingly, Matthew was called later, earlier in this chapter, he was called to be an apostle.
He called to be a disciple of Christ.
And he's writing down the events of what took place.
He had just seen amazing things happen.
And he says there was something physically.
Jesus was physically affected by what he saw to the point that it got my attention.
And now the Holy Spirit has led him to lead.
So you and I can see this as well.
And this is where we're at.
We're at the place where Christ is moved to the point of he is physically noticeably different.
He doesn't just see the multitudes.
By the way, the disciples saw the same multitudes, right?
They were there.
They could look out and see the same people.
Christ looks out and see the same people.
But he was affected differently.
He was moved.
The Bible describes it.
Moved with compassion.
And the definition of compassion is a suffering with another.
He.
This is nothing that you don't know.
But we have a compassionate God.
He knows what you're going through.
He knows your heartaches.
He knows your shortcomings.
He knows what makes you anxious and what makes you discouraged and really how you function.
He knows it affects him.
It affects him to the point where he does something about it.
And this compassion.
Here's the other part of the definition.
A suffering with another, a painful sympathy, sorrow to pity in the inward parts, compassion.
This is also Webster's, the last part of this definition.
Listen to this.
It says, compassion mixed with passion, compounded with love and sorrow.
Do you have that?
Do I have that?
How many people did you pass today?
Driving down the road, gas station, convenience store, grocery store, school, work, practice, whatever you had, whatever your activities were.
How many people did I pass today?
I wasn't moved.
Was I moved?
Did I have this same level of compassion on the people around me?
I don't know if I did or not.
I want to say yes.
I want to say yes.
And then the next question is, okay, what did I do?
Did I sympathize with them?
Or was I moved to action?
See sympathy.
David Livingston, he's a great pioneer missionary.
He gave this quote.
He said, sympathy is no substitute for action.
So we can be sympathetic.
We can sit here and see the missionary videos and say, you know what I can see, you know, God bless those that are in that closed country.
God bless those that are in Brazil or wherever they're at.
And that's fine.
That's good to have sympathy.
But compassion is different.
Compassion allows.
It involves you moving to action.
You take that sympathy and it's moved to action.
Now we're going to.
We're going to do something about it.
Paul said in Romans 10, he says, Brethren, my heart's prayer and desire for Israel is that they might be saved.
And you see, Paul didn't just give platitudes to things that he loved about his people.
He loved the nation of Israel.
He loved his people.
He was called to the Gentiles, but he loved the Jews.
And Paul said, hey, I'm going to go to every single synagogue.
I'm going to be preaching in every major city.
I want to go to Rome.
All roads lead to Rome.
I want to get there, get.
I want to get this.
He had compassion, he had a way.
He had a drive about him.
And this is what Christ.
This is the heart of Christ that's beating right now.
This is something, this broken heart, these lost people attract the very heart of God.
I mean, God will stop what he's doing to look at the lost, to see you're hurt, to do.
I mean, look how far he came to save you.
He came from the glories of heaven to die on a rugged cross, to be laid in the dirt as a baby, and then to go to die on the cross.
That was compassion.
That was passion and action.
And he saw the multitude.
He was moved by man's misery.
He saw their disappointments.
And look what it says here.
It says at the middle verse, it says, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
Now, in that context, that word fainted means completely devastated.
They were under the assumption by the religious leaders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees of the day that the.
This way, these actions, these religious rituals can buy you and me favor with God.
And they said, well, hey, we're going to go do.
We're going to check all those boxes.
We're going to do what you say.
But it doesn't help.
I don't feel any closer.
It's not working.
And so now Jesus Christ comes on the scene.
And now things are happening.
Now things are moving forward.
They said, we've never seen this before.
Something's different.
Christ saw their spiritual condition.
They were looking.
It says that they were looking and were scattered abroad because they fainted and were scattered abroad.
They were looking, but they never found.
They're still looking.
And it broke his heart.
And he really wanted.
Sometimes, you know, you read through the gospels, you read through Christ's teachings.
You know, there's times where Christ taught and there's times where Christ preached and then there's times where he is just in action and he's working and doing.
And this is one of the ones where this lesson, he's not really teaching a lesson, so to say he didn't plan this sermon three point outline.
He's not typing, but he's preaching by his actions.
He's the only preacher ever to be able to preach what he lives and lives what he preaches fully.
And so they were here, they desired this spiritual instruction and they had gone to the world, they had gone to religion, they had gone to all the things that the world had to offer and they were left empty.
It was the blind leading the blind and they were without a shepherd and Christ's heart was broken.
So then I want you to see first his compassion.
Secondly, I want you to see the problem.
I want you to see what is going on here.
And what I believe to be the surface level problem was there wasn't enough laborers.
Well, the laborers were right beside him.
They were looking right at him.
He had laborers.
Where was the disconnect?
What are we not seeing?
The problem was that he was, he was dealing with a heart issue.
Let me share with you this story.
This was in:I started.
My wife and I started a van route in Dayton, Ohio.
We started with one family, a boy and a girl.
And Lord grew that.
And we had to get my cdl as we started driving a bus.
We started averaging about 30 and things were going well.
Well, VBS comes on and VBS was crazy.
Okay, VBS was crazy.
And we had eight bus routes and lots and lots of kids.
And my route was on the west side of Dayton.
And just what you're.
Yes, it was that what you're thinking the west side of Dayton would be.
And it was a.
It was a tough inner city neighborhood.
Those kids were grown, those kids were raised a different way and they were brought up, they just experienced things that you and I.
Maybe not.
Maybe you have, maybe not.
But it was a difficult ministry and we had VBS and I had taken off a couple days the week before, passed out a bunch of flyers and.
And we're going to have a big day.
And in the bus office at Cornerstone is a plaque and it's called the 100 Club.
And it gave like the few, like nine people who had 100 kids on their route.
And I'm like I want that.
I want to have 100 kids.
100 Is my goal.
And we're not talking laws and safety.
We're just talking just my ambition.
So what happened is the first night we had 72 on the bus, 72 on the bus.
And seven of them got saved.
The police got called.
They were throwing stuff out the window at other cars.
All of them didn't get saved, Only seven of them, no.
So I dealt with that, got home, it was late, and I'm like, hun, that was a good talking to my wife.
I was like, that was good, wasn't it?
She's like.
She starts breaking down, she's crying.
And I'm like, what did I miss?
I thought this was good.
I thought we did something well.
And she's like, I can't do this now.
What, Lord?
I was like, what's wrong?
She's like, it's just so much.
She's like, there was a fight.
I broke up a fight.
I'm picking up kids, they're jumping over seats, they're doing this.
They're throwing stuff out the window.
They're too much.
And I said, okay.
The next day, 89 kids.
My wife's like, I'm done with you.
But I needed her.
I needed her on.
We had several workers and long story short, we.
She's struggling.
She's really struggling.
On Wednesday night, we went Monday through Wednesday.
And on Wednesday night, I just said, hey, let's just finish this.
Let's get through this.
And will be done.
Well, 98 on Wednesday night, almost 198.
And that was just over the top, just overwhelming.
Can't handle this.
This is just so stressful.
And I said, okay, well, this is the last night.
And I did have a talk with the Dayton police officer saying that, you know that your bus is regulated for 72 riders, right?
Okay, well.
And so do all my officers.
They know that you know, that.
Just want to let you, you know, make sure we're on the same page.
And I said, okay, that's fine.
Well, that evening I.
That the day before we went out, we ran an evening vbs.
And I prayed and I said, Lord, I said, I don't know how to really pray for this.
I said, I've sit here and you seem to be blessing the ministry.
You seem to have your hand upon this.
I'm doing something wrong.
What am I doing?
What is the problem?
The disciples saw the same.
What is going on?
I'm missing something.
And God showed me later in this verse.
I didn't know it at the time, but reading through this, the Holy Spirit said hey, do you remember that time in Dayton when this happened?
So yes, he said similar, not the same, similar to this.
And what happened after was that night we, we went and we had another, we had 72 on the, on the route.
We were legal.
We had a couple vans that followed behind us and it was, it was a, it was a good year.
A good, it was taxing.
And that evening we went to, to rally all the kids up to load them up on the bus.
Those kids just came around us, just loved on us.
I mean we were surrounded.
There were kids like, I mean just everywhere and they were saying, Ms. Leah, we love you Mr. Daniel, we love you.
And I said God, did I fall in love with the ministry or did I fall in love with the people?
You see, God sees people.
He doesn't see these ministries in and of themselves.
God loves people.
And what, what happened next was I began to pray that God would give me a love for those kids.
Be careful what you pray for.
We had a bulletin board with all of these kids pictures on them with all their names written.
They had some unique names and we're trying to remember all these names.
Man, I could recall every one of them.
I know what they look like.
God taught me a valuable lesson that ministry is about the people.
And if we are not loving people, we're not doing it God's way.
And we've got to get back to where God, where we are serving God because we love what he loves.
That is the definition of the will of God, of doing the heart of God, doing what God wants.
This is what he wants.
And one thing too now what I've caught is every time I watch a missionary video, you can hear it in the missionaries voices.
And they will say God has called me to this place.
But look at all the people.
And when they put their focus on the people, I would say most of the folks who come through this church, they are, they, they, they have the heart for people.
They're not focused in on building big this or doing this.
They love people.
People and that's what we need right now.
We need to be able to serve God, to minister to others with the love of Christ.
And that forever changed me in a way.
You know, there's a way for us to learn truth where we hear the word of God.
We hear someone, our pastor or our Sunday school teacher preach a truth and we receive it and we say that that's great, I love it.
We go tell someone.
But then there's Another way to receive truth, too.
It's where you live it out.
It's where God has allowed you to go through the lesson or go through the test.
And then he teaches you the lesson at the end.
And that was this for me, where God said, hey, these disciples who are looking at the same people who saw their diseases, he saw all their disfigurements.
They were paralyzed, some of them.
They were disfigured.
They couldn't speak, they couldn't see.
And God saw not the outward way that broke his heart.
He saw their eternal spiritual condition.
And he was moved with compassion.
He did something about it.
Then.
Now the actual problem of not having laborers come about.
So we see the problem now.
We see the prayer.
Look what the prayer says in verse 37.
It says, Then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Then he tells the disciples, he says, pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.
This prayer is, I believe that these disciples.
And you go back and you can look, in Luke 10, there was more than 12.
The Bible says that there were 12 and 70 more.
There was approximately 82 disciples, 12 apostles, 80 and 82 disciples that he was talking to.
And these.
These disciples saw this.
And this was such an impactful moment in their life, in their ministry.
Because the very next verse.
Look at verse 10, chapter 10, verse 1, it says, and when he had called unto his 12 disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirit to cast them out and to heal all matter of sickness and all matter of disease.
And then you see the first mission trip of the disciples where they went out and they began to preach the kingdom of God to all of them.
So what they saw here, yes, the prayer is needed.
And I would challenge you tonight if you're involved in ministry in any way.
Usher, a deacon, a nursery worker, a Sunday school teacher, any capacity at all for ministry, I would challenge you tonight to ask yourself, why are you serving?
Why are we doing what we're doing?
And if it's not for the people, it's not right.
I believe that.
I believe that God is showing that here, that it's this love for people that I can't teach you, that I can't give that to you.
I don't have what you need, but God does.
And I promise you, you pray and you ask God to give you a love for that people.
You don't have to pray for the ministry.
You just love the people.
The ministry will do.
God will give the increase.
So hit this prayer.
God has been and is currently working in everyone's heart to bring us all closer.
He's allowing things in our lives and circumstances.
Passages through scriptures, daily reading, devotion, Sunday school classes.
All these things are family events.
He wants you and I to get to know him more.
He wants us to come into a closer relationship.
That relationship, what does it actually mean, is when we start to act upon the very heart of God.
When we see what moves God's heart and we say, that is what I want.
I want that type of love.
I want to be able to affect people in those ways.
And I believe that God will respond to you in a great, great way.
And I don't know how the Lord will use this message tonight to help you.
But I needed a reminder of this.
I needed a reminder about why my why got a little off balance.
Every time.
Every time you do something, watch your heart.
Your heart matters so much.
We can please God with our actions, with what we do and why we do it.
But our heart is really the working ground of God.
And after they prepared the heart, after he prepared the heart of his disciples, the ministry just took off.
Everything was good, you see, they turning the world upside down.
Now would you stand with me?
Let's have a word of prayer.
Lord, we come to you tonight thankful for your word and the truth of it.
Thank you for how real it is in our life.
Thank you for the effect that it has.
Lord, I pray now that you help me with my heart, Lord.
That you would prepare in all of us as a whole, Lord, exactly, exactly what you would want from us, Lord.
That we would see your actions and we would be moved with compassion.
Lord, I pray that you would resonate this in a way that, Lord, I can't and I'm not even going to try to.
But I pray that, Lord, you can take this and do what you do best with it.
Lord, work.
Help us now.
I pray in Jesus name, Amen.
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