In our last discussion, we saw a summary of Jesus’s ministry. He went on foot to 204 villages and cities, preaching, teaching in synagogues, and healing all manner of diseases. This was not an ordinary effort for the Son of Man in human flesh. We also looked at the motive for his ministry, getting a glimpse into the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ. We saw his infinite compassion for the state of mankind. When he saw people, he assessed their true spiritual condition and saw their needs. They were faint and weary, worn out, exhausted, and terribly beaten up. They were battered, mangled, and severely damaged, as if they had been ripped and torn apart.
The reason for this state is explained with an Old Testament metaphor: they were like sheep without a shepherd. He saw them in this state and was moved with compassion. As I explained, that phrase is so deep it has no words in any other language. It is the great infinite compassion of God expressed in a weak human body. His great compassion was the motive for his tireless ministry.
Now, in verses 37 and 38, we see two more things:
- His discernment and assessment of the situation.
- His command to intercede.
Discerning the Situation: The Harvest
Jesus first speaks of the condition of the people using the metaphor of sheep without a shepherd. He then changes the metaphor to a harvest.
Matthew 9:37: “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.'”
What does he mean by this? One way to interpret it is that there were many people ready to be harvested for the Kingdom. There are many people who need to be reached. All around us are broken, torn, and ripped-apart people, left to die. They are ready to be reached if only someone would go into the harvest fields. Jesus looked at the vast crowd of people with his telescopic, eternal view. He wasn’t just seeing those people, but all people throughout all ages, and he saw their terrible spiritual condition.
There’s another picture of a harvest in the Old Testament. In Isaiah 17:10-11, the term “harvest” is used for judgment. In Joel 3:9, God calls the nations to judgment with the harvest metaphor: “Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley; for there I will sit to judge all the nations round about. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.” In Matthew 13, in the parable of the wheat and the tares, Jesus says, “Let both grow together until the harvest. And in the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, ‘Gather together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them. But gather the wheat into My barn.'” Here, the harvest is the end of the world, a time of judgment. You see this picture even in Revelation 14.
When our Lord saw this crowd, he saw them from an eternal perspective. He didn’t just see people in their current physical problems. He saw them as people moving toward hell. What moved Jesus Christ was the terrible present condition of people—shattered and skinned alive—living in darkness without guidance, protection, or knowledge of the truth. They were sheep with no shepherd, foolishly following dead religion and blind leaders. They were all going to fall eternally into hell. He saw the eternal judgment they were going to face: being cursed, separated from all good, separated from the presence of God, bearing the eternal wrath of God with the devil and demons, in eternal fire, weeping and gnashing their teeth. Their souls were damned forever.
Do we know the value of a soul? It was created in God’s image and will live as long as God lives. What is the value of that soul? Jesus said that your soul is worth more than the rest of the world put together. In Matthew 16:26, he asked, “What will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?” He used the term “world” in a commercial, profitable sense. You can sell London, Bangalore, India, and the whole world, and still, with all that, you cannot buy one soul—not even a billion worlds. A soul is more precious than all of that.
Why is your soul so valuable?
- Its eternal quality. It will never die. You are going to live forever and ever. Compared to eternity, this life of 50 or 100 years is less than a millisecond; it is a fraction that cannot even be measured. One man said, “Let all the earth be crushed to the size of small rice grains. Let a bird take one piece, cross the universe, and go to the other end and drop that rice grain. May it do it until it completes all the material. That is the beginning of eternity.” What a weighty word! Every soul—your soul, my soul, the soul of everyone we see every day—will live forever.
- God’s concern for it. God is “not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9). God sees your soul as the most valuable thing in the world, so valuable that He sent His only Son to the cross to suffer and die so that your soul may be saved.
- The price paid for its redemption. The Bible says, “Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18-19).
- The severity of its loss. It is terrible when a person loses their health, money, friends, or, worse still, their character. But what about the loss of a soul? A soul may not look valuable to many people, like an old sandal. But we realize the value of anything only when we lose it. People in hell will be ready to lose anything in this world if they can gain their soul back because they have lost it forever.
So these people, even with great physical needs, had their greatest need: their soul was going to perish in the harvest. They needed to be told about God. They needed to be taught the truth, and they needed to hear the only soul-saving gospel. That is what made our Lord work day and night, going to 204 places on foot out of compassion. He could see their ultimate end. Oh, what a terrible thing it will be for them to face a just and holy God in their depraved state, realizing that their soul will live forever away from God! They will cry, “Mountains, fall on us!” What a terrible judgment that will be for them. Jesus saw that.
Do we know the value of souls? Do we see people away from the true shepherd, being torn and eaten by Satan? They are totally depraved, bearing the mountains of guilt and the burden of sin, with the potential to commit the most horrible crimes, and they are on the edge of everlasting damnation. Their end is eternal hell. Look around, there are so many people like this. If you don’t have that view and don’t know the true condition of people, if you don’t see this assessment through Jesus’s eyes, you can never have the compassion he had. You will not have any vision, and there will be no motive for you to even lift a finger to save a soul.
Paul said in 2 Corinthians 5, “Knowing the terror of the Lord, we persuade men.” We understand hell. In Romans 12, Paul talked about the vengeance of God. In 2 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul painted such a vivid picture: “In the day when the Lord Jesus is revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels and flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.” It is so easy for us to lose the sense of the soon-to-happen and inevitability of eternal judgment. There is no way to describe hell. Nothing on earth can compare with it. No living person can really comprehend it. The greatest mental pain, torture, or nervous problem can only explain one percent of hell. No murder scene with splattered blood, or bodies cut and mutilated, could ever suggest the revulsion that one glimpse of hell could suggest. And our Lord saw that, and he was moved to reach out to people. So our Lord saw the crowds. He taught them, preached to them, and healed them because of his compassion, their condition, and their ultimate end. I hope that speaks to your heart. It sure does to mine.
The Urgency of the Situation
The idea of immediate need is contained in the figure of the harvest, for the reaping of a harvest is, for the farmer, a matter of “now or never.” There are some things we can do leisurely, but farming is a seasonal business. There is a limited time. The harvest must be gathered before winter or the rain begins, or it is lost completely. The most critical thing for a harvest is the laborers. Even today in our villages, the greatest problem is the labor problem.
He says on one hand, the harvest is plentiful, but on the other hand, the laborers are few. Imagine a farmer who planted 10,000 acres of grain. Through the providence of God, he got an optimum crop, a hundred times what he planted. He would need 500 men to harvest this quickly. They are ripe and he has to harvest soon, or else he will lose everything. But a sickness came to all his laborers, and they are all bedridden. All he has are two laborers against 500. He would stand there and look at the 10,000 acres of harvest, looking as far as his eye could see. Can you imagine his pain? How much effort he would have put into the harvest? He has toiled for months, plowing, seeding, watering, and protecting, and now a great harvest has come. He sighs and says, “My harvest is the most plentiful, but my workers are few. What shall I do? Winter is coming.” The cold chill, rain, and wind will spoil the harvest. That is the picture. There is an urgent need.
Behold the Redeemer in this picture. He looks upon the world today and says within himself, “All these multitudes of precious souls will be lost, for there are so few reapers to gather them in.” Even though he is going to all the villages and cities and is going to send his disciples, he views the situation with stark realism. He has a practical, sober assessment: a lot of harvest and few workers. This sober assessment was accurate when he was on the earth.
This sober assessment is so true today. If we have eyes to see, our country’s harvest is plentiful. Can your eyes see it, brothers? Can you fly on an eagle’s wing over the vast fields and unreaped plains? Fly and see! There are so many villages and cities. India has 640,867 villages and more than 4,000 cities. We have 135 crore people, the second-largest population in the world, next to China. How many of the elect are among them? They are still sinners in the world and need the gospel. There are precious grains, but they are decaying and rotting in ignorance, with no knowledge of the truth. They are leaving their Creator, worshiping creatures and cows, blindly following leaders. There is no light and no gospel.
The Bible shows that if a society has hit the lowest bottom without God’s light, the evidence is that men are with men and women are with women, doing unnatural things. This is happening, and our highest court, which should uphold the sanctity of the law, has passed a rule that homosexuality is not wrong. Oh, do we see how low we have hit? How will our children and grandchildren live in this society tomorrow? What will they become? Do you see that this was the condition of Sodom? Do you see this is where we were in Judges, going down and down? The Benjamites came to this level, and God destroyed them. What wrath of God are they going to face? Romans 1 says wrath has already come; God gave them up to the lusts of their hearts. Do you realize the gospel is the only solution? We will all leave this world soon. What effect are we going to have on this terrible sinful society with all the gospel truth and knowledge God gave us? When we die, can we die with a good conscience that we have done everything so that the blood of many of our known people will not be on us because we have done enough for their souls? What have we done for the gospel in our lifetime? How much of the gospel burden do we have, which is the only solution? Do you see how much need there is for the gospel? Shouldn’t this break our hearts and make us cry? This should be our greatest burden instead of going through all our days like the gentiles, wondering what we will eat, drink, and wear. How many days are we going to waste like this? The harvest is plenty, and crores and crores are perishing. They are ruined to their own eternal injury. And it grieves the Great Farmer that it should be so. On one side, people who have to hear the gospel are lost. What about the so-called churches everywhere that have to preach the truth?
It is indeed heartbreaking to see the state of modern Christianity, where a focus on fame, money, and power often overshadows the true Gospel. The provided text powerfully expresses this sorrow and outlines a path forward, emphasizing a profound need for genuine laborers in the “plentiful harvest.”
The State of Modern Christianity
The author laments the current state of the church, which they see as largely superficial and false.
- False Ministry: Many large churches are built on the principles of prosperity and healing rather than the sound preaching of God’s Word. The author notes that leaders in these ministries are often self-appointed, lack a deep knowledge of the Bible, and simply preach what they want, leading to a superficial form of Christianity that angers and repels non-believers.
- A Lack of Conviction: The author expresses frustration with those who, despite knowing the truth, continue to attend and support these false ministries for the sake of family or social pressure. They question where “men with spine who stand for truth” are, and where the shame is for those who compromise their beliefs.
- The Unmet Need: The author sees millions of people who are “fed up with stories and testimonies” and are genuinely yearning for the “sound teaching” and “authoritative preaching” of God’s Word. They are looking for true shepherds to feed them, not pastors who only seek personal praise.
The Urgency of the Harvest
The text draws a direct connection between Jesus’s compassion and the urgent need for laborers.
- The Plentiful Harvest: The author, like Jesus, sees a vast number of souls perishing without the gospel. They emphasize that time is short, and we cannot afford to wait. This generation will be gone before any long-term plans for evangelism can be fully executed.
- The Scarcity of Laborers: Despite the immense need, there are very few willing to do the hard, demanding work of ministry. The author challenges the GRBC community to reflect on this, questioning if they are willing to step up and be trained for the call of God, especially given their privilege of having access to sound teaching.
- God’s Chosen Method: The author makes a crucial point about God’s chosen method for evangelism. While God is omnipotent and could save souls without human intervention, He has ordained that the harvest will be reaped through human “laborers.” This is why Jesus, despite His compassion, didn’t simply say that God would take care of it. Instead, He commanded His followers to pray for more workers. The author quotes Romans 10 to support this idea: people will not believe if they have not heard, and they cannot hear without someone to tell them.
The Qualities of a Laborer
The text emphasizes that God is not looking for managers or executives, but for true “laborers” who are willing to do the hard work.
- Hard Work: A laborer is someone who is willing to toil, to “bend, carry cement, mix it,” and work in the hot sun. In ministry, this means mental, emotional, and spiritual labor. It requires deep study of the Word, meditation, and a willingness to pour one’s entire self into a sermon.
- Courage and Conviction: A true laborer must not be soft or use flattering words. They must be willing to call sin “sin” and speak about God’s wrath, even if it “wounds the conscience.”
- A Heart for Gathering: A laborer also brings people together, binding them into a cohesive flock. They are not scatterers who cause division and tear churches apart.
- Perseverance: A true minister’s work is not done until the souls they have labored for are “housed” in heaven. This requires a lifelong commitment to caring for the spiritual well-being of others.
The Path to Involvement
The author asks, “What are you going to do about it?” and provides a surprising, yet critical, first step: prayer.
- Pray for Laborers: Jesus’s command was not to panic or to come up with a great program, but to “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” This is because God has willed that His great work of salvation be preceded by prayer. Prayer prepares the hearts of believers for the work, increases their burden for souls, and grants them the Holy Spirit’s help.
- From Intercession to Involvement: The author explains that when we begin to pray for laborers, we may soon find that God is calling us to be one of those very laborers. Praying for others to go will lead to a sense of personal responsibility and involvement.
- God’s Method: This is God’s method: first, we gain insight into the desperate need; second, we pray with burden; and third, out of our prayers comes our involvement. The author quotes J. Hudson Taylor to reinforce this idea, stating that the great need is for earnest prayer and a spiritual deepening in the church so that men are “unable to stay home.”
The text ends with a powerful challenge, urging the audience to recognize the urgency, to pray for laborers with a broken heart, and to understand that their prayers are an integral part of God’s work in saving the lost. It reminds them that until they see, they will not feel; until they feel, they will not care; until they care, they will not pray; and until they pray, they will not go.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 