The Harvest Is Plentiful

Allow me to open our message with an illustration. In his book entitled The Kingdom Focused Church, Gene Mims shares the following account: “After Marco Polo returned from the magnificent imperial court of Kublai Khan in 1926, he wrote that the mighty Khan asked him to request that the Pope send him a hundred priests to teach Christianity to his subjects. Then, according to Polo, Kublai Khan said, ‘I shall allow myself to be baptized. Following my example, all my nobility will then in like manner receive baptism, and this will be imitated by all my subjects in general. In the end, the Christians of these parts will exceed in number those who inhabit your own country’.”

“Polo concluded, ‘From this discourse it must be evident that if the Pope had sent out persons duly qualified to preach the gospel, the Great Khan would have embraced Christianity, for which, it is certainly known, he had strong predilection’.” Mims further shares, “The Pope could spare only two friars for the evangelization of China, both of whom turned back before they were halfway there, saying the trip was too difficult. Imagine how different the world would be today if Kublai Khan’s invitation had been accepted!”(1) “Ignoring an opportunity to evangelize can change the course of history for the worse, as much as action in the name of Christ, can change it for the better”(2) – and with this illustration in mind, I want to invite you to stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word in Matthew 9:35-38:

35 Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. 36 But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. 37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. 38 Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”

Jesus Served with Compassion (vv. 35-36a)

Beginning in verse 35, we see the activities that comprised Jesus’ ministry, which serves as a guide for our efforts: Jesus shared the gospel everywhere He went through teaching and preaching, and He met people’s needs by healing their sicknesses and diseases. We know that He also fed the hungry, showed compassion to the outcast, interacted with the untouchables, and Jesus instructed His followers to care for the poor, hungry, thirsty, and those in need of clothing, emphasizing the importance of serving others by meeting their physical needs. But while He was serving them, verse 36 says that “Jesus saw the multitudes, [and] He was moved with compassion for them.”

The Greek word in verse 36 for “moved with compassion” (splagchnistheis) is derived from the word for “bowels” (splagchna), as the Jews esteemed the bowels to be the seat of emotion. “It is an emphatic word, signifying a vehement affection of [sympathy and sorrow], by which the bowels, and especially the heart, is moved . . . to feel pity or compassion at seeing the miseries of others.”(3) When Jesus looked at the multitudes, He was moved with compassion because of their pain, their sorrow, their hunger, their loneliness, and their bewilderment;(4) and all their problems were the result of being shepherdless, as they were deprived and devoid of any spiritual guidance.

The People Are Without a Shepherd (v. 36b)

Jesus saw that they “were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd” (v. 36). The word weary (eskulmenoi) can be translated as “harassed.” The word scattered (errimenoi) can be translated as “prostrated,” and “pictures the people as being like sheep thrown down and lying helpless.”(5) Commentator A.T. Robertson elaborates how it was “a sad and pitiful state the crowds were in. Rent and mangled as if by wild beasts . . . they were harassed, importuned, bewildered by those who should have taught them; hindered from entering into the kingdom of heaven, laden with the burdens which the Pharisees [and other spiritual leaders had piled] upon them . . . The masses were in a state of mental rejection. No wonder that Jesus was moved with compassion.”(6)

Commentator Frank Stagg elaborates even further: “Jesus saw the crowds like sheep cast down and helpless and like a neglected harvest. By outward [signs], religion was robust, with crowded temple, synagogues in every village, six thousand Pharisees, twenty thousand lower priests, a small but powerful group of Sadducean priests, a sizable group of Essenes, and other sectarian groups. But with thousands of priests and laymen who made religion their chief business, the people were neglected, or even worse, thrown down and left helpless.”(7) This reminds me of today. In the “Bible Belt” there is a church on every street corner, often filled with numerous paid staff and teaming with church-goers; and yet, countless individuals are unreached, with their needs going unmet.