This sermon was preached to Grace Church Guildford on 23 October 2022. The full video recording of the service can be found below along with the transcript.
What is the greatest need of our world right now? As Jamie hinted at this morning, there is no shortage of problems and difficulties that need to be addressed around the world right now: a violent war in Ukraine, an energy crisis engulfing Europe, a lack of political leadership and economic stability here in the UK. And that isn’t even beginning to consider other longstanding issues, such as the instability of North Korea or the impact of global warming, or the personal difficulties that affect many of us as individuals, such as physical and mental health, employment concerns, family disagreements. If you step back and look around, it is clear that we are all needy people living in a needy world. And yet, when we turn to the Bible, we see that above all of these very real concerns, this world has an even greater need. The greatest need our world has right now is not financial or social, political or physical. Our greatest need is a spiritual one. As Christians, when we look out across our land and the nations of this world, the need that should stand out, strike us most, is that this world needs Jesus.
This is exactly what we see in our passage this evening. If you remember, last week I said Matthew 8-9 forms a separate section in the book, a section of story that turns into a section of sermon in Matthew 10. And Matthew makes this transition in the same way as he did previously, when he moved from the story of chapters 1-4 to the sermon of chapters 5-7. If you look back with me to the end of chapter 4, you see a summary in 4:23 of what Jesus has been doing and then in 4:24-25 we are given the context for what will come, as we are told of the crowds that are following Jesus and will soon be taught by him in the Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5-7. And here, in Matthew 9, the same kind of transition occurs. For in 9:35, Matthew again gives us a short summary of what Jesus has been doing during this period. We read: [READ]. And then in 9:36 Matthew begins to lay the context for the teaching that follows in chapter 10. For we read: [READ].
When Jesus looks out on those around him, steps back and considers the land that he lives in, like us, he too is struck by their need. And yet, as we shall see, this need is not financial or social, not political or physical. Now, that is not to say that such needs didn’t exist in Jesus’ day, indeed, in many ways they were even more needy than we are today. As we have seen over the last two chapters, many were sick and suffering, far more than our in 21st century Western world, where we have medicine and welfare to help. Further, they had more than their fair share of political problems, for they were occupied by the Romans and had few political rights. And yet, when Jesus looked out on the crowd that day, as we shall see, it was their spiritual need that struck him most, and so it was this need that he began to address. You see, in our passage tonight, we are not just told of a problem, we are also told of a solution. After Jesus looked out across the crowd that day, he turns to his disciples and explains how they, how we, can meet the greatest need of this world. Jesus tells us that we can meet the greatest need in this world through two simple steps: (1) Ask (9:35-38); and (2) Act (10:1-15).
1. ASK FROM THE LORD (9:35-38)
What did Jesus see when he looked around that day? What was it that caught his attention? Well Matthew tells us in 9:36: [READ]. A few years ago, Sarah and I went up to the Lake District on holiday. We rented an Airbnb on a farm, up in the hills above Keswick. While there few people around in that remote location, there were plenty of sheep. One morning we got into the car to drive into Keswick, and as he went down the farm lane, the sheep who had been happily grazing in the neighbouring field the night before, had clearly one by one squeezed through the hedge, and started to spill out into the lane and across surrounding hillside. They were clearly confused where they should go, as they were just wandering around everywhere, and they were in danger, as a main road lay at the end of the lane. They were sheep without a shepherd, scattered across the hillside. And that is the kind of image that Jesus uses in 9:36. When he looked out on the people of Israel that day, he seen them in the same way as I saw those sheep in the Lake District: helpless, leaderless, wandering, in danger, lost. Did you notice that is how Jesus characterises them later in 10:6? In 10:6, when he sends his apostles out, he tells them to go ‘to the lost sheep of Israel.’ Now the crowds that day were clearly not literally lost, they didn’t need to ask for directions to find their way home. And yet, when Jesus looks at them, he sees that they have, in one sense, wandered away, strayed, taken the wrong path, got themselves lost. When Jesus looked at the crowd, he sees, above and beyond whatever other needs they may have, their greatest need is that they are lost, in danger, that they have no one to lead them to safety.
If you are not a Christian tonight, you need to know that the Bible again and again describes our greatest problem in this way. Perhaps most famously, in Isaiah 53:6 it says, ‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way...’. The Bible explains that all of us, like those sheep in the Lake District, have decided to squeeze through the hedge, to set off on our own adventure. We have all broken the boundaries God has given us, rejected his rules, and taken our own path in life. That is what the Bible means that we have all sinned. Like those sheep, we are lost, we cannot find our way back to God. And like them, we are in danger, for we will soon be lost forever. Having abandoned God, we will soon be left to suffer under his eternal judgment against sin.
Jesus looks out at this world and sees its greatest need is that it is lost, that all of us have abandoned God and went our own way. However, Matthew not only tells us Jesus sees this world is lost, but also that Jesus feels this world is lost. You see, for Jesus, this observation is not merely an intellectual one. For in 9:36 we are told that ‘when he saw the crowds he had compassion on them’. That word compassion means ‘moved in his inward parts’, today we might say Jesus’ heart went out to or was breaking for the crowd. Jesus not only looks at the lost, Jesus loves the lost. He sees their great need, the way they have wandered from God and have no one to bring them back or care for them, and his heart aches because of this. And it is this deep deep love of Jesus that causes him to turn to his disciples and tell them to pray. For Jesus, such prayer is motivated, stimulated, by love, by compassion.
In James 4:3 we are told that we do not have because we do not ask. And of course, that is true. And yet, is it not clear that we can also go one step further back than that? O yes, we do not have because we do not ask, but so often we do not ask because we do not love. If you are anything like me, unlike our Lord, your heart can be cold towards the crowd, you are not moved by their need like Jesus and therefore do not pray as you should. Of course, intellectually, we want to see those around us become Christians, and yet, emotionally, we are not as moved as we ought to be by their need. Our head knows better than our heart feels. Our desires are weak, and so our prayers are few.
If you are a Christian here this evening, do you notice the need of those around you? Do you look out and see the lostness of this world? At school or at University, do you look with compassion on your classmates? Like sheep they are lost, and unless someone tells them of Jesus, they will be lost forever. Are you burdened by that? The same is true for our colleagues at work. No matter how together their life may seem, the Bible teaches that they are harassed and helpless, driven by destructive desires and cut off from God. Wherever your mission field is, do you look across it and see the need, feel the need, of those around you? Does the same deep deep love that moved in Jesus also move in you? For if it doesn’t, maybe that what you need to start praying about. Start praying for the spiritual need that you already see in those around you, yes, but also start praying that God might cause you see that need, to feel that need, in greater and clearer ways. Pray that God will open your eyes to the lostness of this world. Pray that the Holy Spirit would pour out the love of God more and more into your heart. So that you can begin to both love and pray for the lost of this world like our Lord does here.
We can see and feel such need all around us, not just at home or at work, but even in our churches. That conclusion Jesus draws in 9:37 that ‘the workers are few’, surely describes the state of many likeminded churches around us today. This week I spent an afternoon with a group of pastors from other Grace Baptist Association churches. And the reason we were meeting was to discuss this very problem. There are around 70 churches that cooperate with us as part of the association. And of these, 10 currently have no fulltime pastor and another 10 will be looking for one soon. However unfortunately, as our brothers and sisters at Haslemere can testify to, they are all finding that labourers are few. That there are more sheep than there are shepherds. That there is a great need for gospel workers in our churches. And unless we see this, feel this, we are unlikely to pray about it. Unless we look and see a lack of labourers, we will not ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out more.
This is true even in our own congregation. We can be thankful unlike other churches around us, here at Grace Church, we are not sheep without shepherds, for the Lord has given us six such elders to care for us. And yet, as several of you commented to me after our last members meeting, our elders are stretched right now, our shepherds are spread out, busy bearing many burdens. And so, Grace Church, in response to seeing this need, we need to pray. We need to ask the Lord to strengthen and sustain the shepherds that he has given us. We need to pray for these men. And we need to pray for more of these men. Ask the Lord of the Harvest to send out more labourers into this field, pray that he would raise up more shepherds from this church to care for this flock as well as to go and care for those other flocks all around us, those who are currently sheep without shepherds, churches that are ready for a harvest, but have no one to help them bring it in. When see need in our homes and workplaces, schools and churches, we should ask, pray, look to the Lord to send more labourers.
In 9:36-37 we see we live in a needy world. And this is the inspiration behind Jesus’ instruction in 9:38. Because Jesus is moved with compassion for the crowd in 9:36, because the laborers for the harvest are few in 9:37, Jesus turns in 9:38 and says:[READ]. Isn’t it striking that Jesus doesn’t say the harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few, therefore go, get out and start working. No, he says the harvest is plentiful and the labourers few therefore: ask, pray, petition for more workers. When Jesus sees the need of this world, he doesn’t organise a committee meeting, he calls for a prayer meeting. He tells us not to look to our own strength or ability to complete the task, but to look to the Lord of the Harvest ‘to send out workers into hisharvest field.’ Jesus reminds us that this world is God’s world, and that we are working for him.
This week is half term, and so young people, you have the chance to relax and rest from school for a bit. I’m not sure what you have planned, perhaps a sleepover, see a movie or hang out with friends. However, growing up, I remember how I often used to spend my October half terms. My grandfather was a farmer, and if the harvest came late in the year, we would go up to help him gather it in. Given that I grew up in Ireland, you can hardly be surprised to hear that his main crop was of course potatoes. My responsibility for that week was very clear – I was a labourer, I spent all day on my hands and knees picking potatoes out of the ground and into a small box, which then I carried over and put into a big box. That’s all you would do all day. Any big decisions that need to be made, like what field we went to next or whether we needed to get in more help to get it finished in time, those questions all went to Granda, because he was the farmer, it was his fields, his crops, and so he was in charge, I was just the labourer. I was responsible to simply gather in the potatoes in this little part of the field, everything else was his responsibility?
Well here in 9:38, Jesus picks up that image and says that God is the farmer, the one who owns this land, and that we are simply the labourers, who work on his behalf. Each of us ought to work hard in our little part of his field, we should happily labour long hours for a master who has been so merciful to us. And yet, in the end, this is God’s work, it is his harvest. And that means that as hard as we should all work, we should all pray even harder. For as we heard last week in Psalm 127, unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain. Unless we look to the Lord of the harvest for help, we simply waste time and energy. Prayerless labour, ends up being pointless labour. Prayer should be a part of everything we do.
This spirit of prayer in everything we do is something I have been so encouraged to see since arriving here at the end of last year. One of the things we say in our vision statement is we want to be a prayer-fuelled church. And of course, while we can always pray more, I give thanks for the way I have seen that to be true. What a joy it is to gather for prayer meetings on Thursdays, as we did this week, and spend an hour together praying for the concerns of God’s kingdom, asking the Lord of the harvest to help us as we labour here in Guildford and further afield. Grace Church, let us continue to do so, whether it is on Thursdays or Sundays or other times, for here we see this is how we begin to meet the greatest need of our world.
2. ACT FOR THE LORD (10:1-15)
That day in the Lake District, after we saw the sheep slowly spill out of their field and onto the hillside, we tried to contact the farm to let them know what was happening. However, when we couldn’t get hold of them, we realised that there was nothing for it: we had to do something, we had to act. And so, while Sarah took the car down to block off the end of the lane, I set about slowing rounding them up and sending them back into their field.
We see this same necessity, not only of asking, but also of acting, in our passage. As D A Carson put it, our passage does not teach ‘we should do nothing but prayer, [but that] we should do nothing without prayer.’ For having just called his disciples to get on their knees to pray, Jesus now tells them to get back on their feet so they can go. Having told them to ask, he now tells them to act. Did you notice that? In 9:38, Jesus told the disciples to ask the Lord of the harvest to ‘send out’ workers. And yet soon after, in 10:5, we read that Jesus ‘sent out’ the disciples to do this work. To paraphrase the famous missionary William Carey, here we see that having asked great things from God, we should also attempt great things for God. A prayer meeting may come first, but here we see that a committee meeting soon follows.
Today, we too should ask God for more labourers. However, having committed that to him in prayer, we then have a responsibility to assist in that recruitment. If we are to meet the need of this world, we must not only ask, we must also act. We must not only pray to the Lord for the lost, but we must also go with the Gospel to the lost. We must not only ask the Holy Spirit to make more elders (Acts 20:28), but we also need to act, to build men up, discipling and training them to serve God’s church. We must not only ask the risen Lord Jesus to send the gift of pastor-teachers to our churches (Ephesians 4:11), but we must also encourage and equip such men for ministry. Prayer is where we start, it is the first and most important step. But having prayed, we cannot fail to also act. Yes, unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain. And yet, when the Lord builds a house, he does it by graciously using our labour.
And so, having told his disciples to ask, Jesus now tells them to act. In 10:1-4, he calls them together to appoint them as his ‘apostles’, his sent ones, his special messengers. And then in 10:5-15 he sends them on a mission. In 10:1-4 he calls. In 10:5-15 he commissions. And this commission lasts for the rest of chapter 10. Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 5-7 is often known as the Sermon on the Mount. However, his teaching here in Matthew 10 should be known as the Sermon on Mission. For this task of the disciples, this mission from Jesus, lasts for the rest of the chapter, and will be our focus for the next few weeks.
However, it is important we see this call to mission isn’t a rash reaction, a momentary rush of enthusiasm. Rather, this the point towards which Jesus has been working for some time. He has been preparing these men for this very mission. We have already seen that in the call to prayer in 9:38, in calling on God to send out labourers, their own hearts were being prepared to take on that very task themselves. As has often been said, you must be careful what you pray about, for God may very well use such prayers to prepare your own heart to go and do it. However, the preparation of these men goes back even further than that. For Jesus has been gradually training them since 4:19, where he told four fishermen, Peter and Andrew, James and John, the first four names on the list in 10:2, to follow him so that he might make them fishers of men. From the very beginning, these men were told this mission was ahead of them, that part of what it meant for them to follow Jesus was to bring others to follow Jesus as well. Since then, these men have been part of Jesus’ training programme, learning from both what he said and what he did. It is the latter that seems to be highlighted to us in 10:1, where Jesus gives these men ‘authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.’ Did you notice there that this authority is the very authority that Jesus is said to demonstrate back in 9:35, where we are told that he was going around ‘healing every disease and sickness.’ What these men had seen Jesus do, they are now sent to do. And this is stressed again in 10:8, where Jesus tells them, ‘Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.’ Those are the very miracles that Matthew has told us that Jesus accomplished in chapters 8-9, and now the disciples are told to do the same, to show that they speak on behalf of the king of heaven by doing the same miracles as he did. These men have been trained for this task. Prepared for this moment. They have watched Jesus on his mission, spent time learning from him, and now, they are sent out on their own for the first time, told to go and do the same. They are sent out for their very first mission.
It is important to see that this mission is unique to this particular point in Jesus’ ministry. There are aspects of this task given to these disciples that do not directly translate into how we are to act for the Lord today. For example, in 10:5 this mission is geographically and ethnically limited to the Jews, with the Gentiles excluded at this time, reflecting the priorities of Jesus’ ministry that we see throughout Matthew. Similarly, the instructions in 10:9-10 regarding what they should not bring with them will change for subsequent missions they go on. For example, in Mark 6:8-9, Jesus tells them to take a staff and sandals, contrary to what he says here, or in Luke 22:35-36, he tells them to take a money purse and bag with them, again different to what he says here. Different situations will call for different strategies. Here we see we must be wise in how we work for the Lord in this world. We must work out what is wise in our particular circumstances, best in our unique situation. As Jesus will soon put it in 10:16, when we go with the Gospel into this world, we must be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.
However, for all the unique instructions we find here, there is one overarching similarity. For in 10:7 Jesus tells them, ‘As you go, proclaim this message: The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ We have already seen this same message proclaimed by John the Baptist in 3:2 and then Jesus in 4:17. And here we see this same message is now handed down to the disciples as well. The same good news that was proclaimed by John the Baptist and Jesus, now sounds forth from the mouths of the apostles, and this is the very same message that we are to proclaim today.
It is the message that our world needs to hear most, the message that addresses their biggest problem, meets their greatest need. That though we have all strayed from God, are living like lost sheep, have abandoned his way and are in danger of his judgement, God looks on this lost world in love. Just as the deep deep love of Jesus moved in him that day when he looked out on the crowds, the deep love of the Father was exercised when he looked across this sinful world. In justice and righteousness, he had to punish us for our rebellion, and yet in his love and mercy he determined to save us. For God so loved the world, that he sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world. To go to the cross and rise from the dead, suffering the punishment that we deserve, so that there could be forgiveness for all who turn from their sin and trust in him. So that all who take him to be their king can come into his kingdom, come back under the good rule and reign of heaven.
If you are not a Christian this evening, we are here to tell you the same message that John and Jesus and the apostles all proclaimed. That if you repent of your sins, if you trust in Jesus as your king, you can be part of his kingdom, part of the people of God. Will you do that this evening? Will you come into this kingdom of heaven? Come back to the God you have abandoned?
If you are a Christian this evening, then this good news, this message proclaimed by John, Jesus and the apostles, this is the same message that you are sent out to share in this world. And we know this without a doubt, because this commission in Matthew 10 is not the only commission in Matthew’s Gospel. It is the first one, the first mission the apostles are sent on, where they given the authority of Jesus to go to all of Israel and proclaim the Gospel. And yet, given the temporary nature of this task, and the limited geographic scope, this commission in Matthew 10 could rightly be called the Little Commission. For we see there is a far greater commission to come, the one know as the Great Commission, in Matthew 28, where Jesus will once again call his disciples and commission them, saying, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations...’. On that day Jesus gave his apostles, his church, a task that is still ongoing today. Sent them on a mission in which all of us have a part to play. Like those first disciples, part of what it means for each of us to follow Jesus is to bring others to follow him as well. To go with this good news into our homes and workplaces, schools and universities, even into all the nations of the world.
As we thought at the beginning, we are all needy people living in a needy world. But, in the end, there is often little we can do to solve the problems we see all around us. It is hard to see which road might lead to peace in Ukraine. No matter who our next Prime Minister turns out to be, they will not be able to fix all our economic and political problems. There are no quick and easy solutions to global warming. Even in our personal lives, there are rarely straightforward answers to health and family struggles. Our world is full of problems, for which there seem to be few solutions. And yet, when it comes to our greatest problem, to the spiritual need that we see in this world, there is something that we can do about it. Even if we can’t help those around us with many of the problems that fill their lives, we can do something that will deal with their greatest problem, meet their greatest need. For here we see that we canask, ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into this world to work for him, and we can act,actby taking the gospel to those around us.
ALEXANDER ARRELL