Help Wanted

If you would like to send your offering through the mail, our mailing address is:

CrossPointe Community Church
P O Box 126
Chippewa Lake, OH 44215

SCRIPTURE

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And He healed every kind of disease and illness. When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to His disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into His fields.”
Matthew 9:35-38

SERMON

Help Wanted

Randy K’Meyer

Jesus traveled through all the towns and villages of that area, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And He healed every kind of disease and illness.
Matthew 9:35

Here, Matthew is giving us a big-picture glimpse into what Jesus is accomplishing. It’s almost identical with what he wrote five chapters earlier, in 4:23:

Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom. And He healed every kind of disease and illness.

However; here in chapter 9, Matthew adds his own very important observation. I say his own observation because Matthew has just entered the scene. Just 25 verses earlier, 9:9 says, “As Jesus walked along He saw a man named Matthew sitting in his tax collectors booth. ‘Follow Me and be My disciple,’ Jesus said to him. So Matthew got up and followed Him.”

So everything Matthew reports prior to this including 4:23, the Sermon on the Mount, the calming of the storm was told to him by other eyewitnesses. But from now on, Matthew is making his own observations. And what does he observe about Jesus?

“When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them” (36).

The word Matthew employs here for compassion exceeds in emotion what we typically think of as compassion. In fact, there are four Greek words that Matthew could have used. The other three imply empathy, pity and sympathy.
But, according to Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, this word compassion means, “to be moved in one’s inward parts.” ¹

Inward parts; interesting not the heart, but the bowels. In other words, Jesus had gut-wrenching compassion for these people. A visceral reaction that figuratively, if not literally, caused Jesus to put his hand to his stomach and bend over in anguish.

Perhaps we can approximate it by thinking about how we feel when we see one of those pictures of an infant who is starving to death.

“When He saw the crowds, He had gut-wrenching compassion on them.”

Why? Because they were starving, because they didn’t have a nice house to live in, because they didn’t have a six-figure salary?

No, “because,” Matthew continues, “they were confused and helpless.” They were confused about how to relate to God and helpless because there was no one to show them the path to take. They were, as Jesus continues, “like sheep without a shepherd” (Mathew 9:36). In other words because they were spiritually lost.

Jesus had gut-wrenching compassion on the multitudes because they were lost and they needed to be found.

And so Jesus adds His own observation: “He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is great’” (Matthew 9:37).

The harvest is great! There are hundreds, thousands, millions of people who are lost and need to be found. Everywhere we look, we see people who are “confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” They are wandering aimlessly through life looking for the next big payday. They are confused because they have come to believe that all there is to life is the accumulation of money so that they can live as comfortably, and then, as luxuriously as possible.

That philosophy of life leaves no room for God and for the kind of alternative life He offers.

Paul writes about people without faith in Christ in his letter to the Ephesians: “Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against Him” (4:18). That sounds harsh, and in today’s world, judgmental; however; spiritually speaking it is a true assessment. There are many, many, many people who live their lives without any conception that there is a God who loves them so much “that He gave His only Son so that whosoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

Jesus had gut-wrenching compassion on the people because the multitudes were lost!

“The harvest is great, but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37).

The same dynamic exists today. There are few Christians who are interested in reaching people for Christ. Why? How about a little food for thought?

Back in 2017, Thom Rainer conducted a poll asking thousands of Christians in many different denominations and non-denominational churches, “Why do you think many churches aren’t as evangelistic as they once were?” Here are the top ten responses listed in order of frequency:

Christians have no sense of urgency to reach lost people.
Many Christians and church members do not befriend and spend time with lost persons.
Many Christians and church members are lazy and apathetic.
We are more known for what we are against than what we are for.
Our churches have an ineffective evangelistic strategy of “you come” rather than “we go.”
Many church members think that evangelism is the role of the pastor and paid staff.
Church membership today is more about getting my needs met rather than reaching the lost.
Church members are in a retreat mode as culture becomes more worldly
and unbiblical.
Many church members don’t really believe that Christ is the only way of salvation.
Our churches are no longer houses of prayer equipped to reach the lost. ²

“The harvest is great, but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37).

William Barclay, in his commentary on this verse, writes,

It is one of the blazing truths of the Christian faith and life that Jesus needs people. When He was upon this earth His voice could reach so few. He was never outside Palestine and there was a world which was waiting. He still wants people to hear the good news of the gospel, but they will never hear unless others tell them. ³

That great 18th-century English missionary/evangelist, John Wesley, founder of the Methodist movement, once said that he wished he could train every one of his ministers by dangling them over hell for 24 hours. ⁴

Certainly, there’s something we could do a little less dramatic than that! Turns out there is. What do you say, Jesus?

“So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into His fields” (Matthew 9:38).

Ah, here Jesus reminds His disciples then, and now, about the all-important link between reaching people for Christ and prayer. Prayer, prayer, prayer . . . and dare I say it again; prayer.

In his first letter to his young padawan, Timothy, Paul writes,

I urge you, first of all, to pray for all people. Ask God to help them; intercede on their behalf, and give thanks for them. This is good and pleases God our Savior, who wants everyone to be saved and to understand the truth. For, there is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity—the man Christ Jesus. He gave His life to purchase freedom for everyone. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time.
I Timothy 2:1-6

Reaching people begins with prayer.

Praying for Christian people to see lost people through the eyes of Christ; feeling in our guts that without faith in Christ people are lost and doomed to spend eternity with God!

When that prayer is humbly prayed and answered, then we’ll be ready and willing to pray for lost individuals as we will today.

And then we will pray for opportunities to speak to the people we have been praying for.

For without Christ, people are lost and they need to be found.

But how can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in him? And how can they believe in him if they have never heard about him? And how can they hear about him unless someone tells them?
Romans 10:14

That’s why twice in one paragraph Paul writes the Corinthians, “He gave us this task of reconciling people to Him” (II Corinthians 5:18). Then again, “He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (II Corinthians 5:19).

He gave it to us; that is; it is a gift, it is not a burden. Rather, like any precious gift, it is to be highly esteemed, to be treasured He trusts us with it; He honors us with it. It is a privilege to be able to point people to Christ!

But before we speak to them, we need to make sure we have spoken to God about them.

To sum, reaching people for Christ is the sob, the heartfelt, gut-wrenching, mind-altering, action-oriented compassion of God.

It is the anguished cry of Jesus as He stands on the Mount of Olives looking over the city where He will soon give His life: “But as He came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, He began to weep. “How I wish today that you, of all people, would understand the way to peace” (Luke 19:41-42).

It is the heartfelt plea of the Apostle Paul who wrote, “My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief for my people, my Jewish brothers and sisters. I would be willing to be forever cursed, cut off from Christ, if that would save them” (Romans 9:2-3).

It is the profound prayer of John Knox: “Give me Scotland Lord, or I die.” ⁵

“When He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. He said to his disciples, “The harvest is great, but the workers are few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send more workers into His fields.”

Jesus is sending you and me today like He did the Apostle Paul when He said to him: “I am sending you to the Gentiles to open their eyes, so they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God. Then they will receive forgiveness for their sins and be given a place among God’s people” (Acts 26:17-18).

“Oh Jesus, gives us Your eyes to see that the harvest is great in Chippewa Lake, the very place You brought us 13 years ago to fulfill our chosen purpose of “Sharing Your Amazing Grace with Our Community.” I pray that You would send more workers into the fields to reap a harvest for Your Kingdom. In the name of Jesus, amen.”

1 Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, Page 116.
As contained in Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, by W. E. Vine, Merrill Unger, and William White, Jr., [Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson Publishers, © 1985].

2 Fifteen Reasons Churches Are Less Evangelistic Today, by Thom Rainer
February 6, 2017
https://churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/outreach-missions-articles/298943-fifteen-reasons-churches-less-evangelistic-today-thom-rainer.html

4 http://hotsermons.com/sermon-illustrations/sermon-illustrations-evangelism.

5 The Collected Prayers of John Knox, Brian G. Najapfour (Editor), [Grand Rapids, Michigan: Reformation Heritage Books, © June 19, 2021].