Monday with Jesus was something that I started writing this summer. First of all, thinking about Jesus seemed like a good way to start the week. Secondly, for so much of my Christian walk, the foundation of my life with Jesus seemed to be about what I could do for Him. More recently, I have come to realize that the foundation of my walk with Jesus, is His love and compassion for me. Period. End of story. In light of this “aha” moment I ‘ve wanted to reexamine the Gospels and reexamine the person of Jesus Christ. In part, because it’s something that I need to do. There is so much about Jesus that I’ve taken for granted. Mondays With Jesus is my opportunity to “rediscover” Jesus.
Matthew 9
35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. 38 Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
While giving Bible Studies for almost a decade I got into some real bad habits. One of the worst is that I would look at text, read the red highlighted portion, and look no further. I brought in a ton of cross-references and discussed at length the words of Jesus, but I did not really examine the context of his words. Who is Jesus talking to? What is his relationship with the other participants in the text? Why is he saying what he’s saying? Secondarily, but almost equally as bad, when looking at passages of scripture, I would read the text selectively. I would only focus on the portions of the text that I felt like explaining.
In the past, I might have looked at Jesus words, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few,” and simply focused on this passage as an exhortation for evangelism.
“People in the world are lost. These people are all around us, if we only had eyes to see them. They are a harvest that is ready for harvest. People are totally missing out on the Good News because we are not taking it to them. We need to share Jesus with them. Jesus is calling us to be workers in the harvest. Don’t you want to be called?”
So, what is the context?
Jesus is bringing the good news of the kingdom to all of the towns and villages. He’s teaching, he’s proclaiming the good news, and he’s healing every disease and sickness. You get the sense of an overwhelming number of people who want to hear the message of the kingdom and who need to be healed. There is an overwhelming press of people. Jesus’response? Compassion. He has compassion on the crowds, because they were harassed and helpless.
Within this context Jesus tells the disciples that the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few, and he tells them to ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest field.
If there were more workers, what would they be doing? Presumably they would be teaching at the synagogues, proclaiming the good news and healing every disease and sickness. They would be showing compassion to the crowds in the same way that Jesus is working among them.
But, Jesus is doing more than simply telling the disciples that they should go into the harvest field. Jesus is telling the disciples to pray and ask God to send workers.
Why does Jesus tell them to pray? He is Jesus after all. He could just as easily tell the disciples that they are the workers of the harvest and they should go out and help the crowds.
Instead, he tells them to pray. Pray for the lost. Pray for the hurting. Pray for the needy. Pray for these people who don’t have a shepherd and who need someone to share with them the good news. For Jesus this was a teaching moment. If he had simply wanted to attend to the crowds, he could have sent out the disciples, as he would do in other passages we sends out the twelve and the seventy-two, but instead he tells them to pray. It’s not about what they can do, but its about what God can do and its about what these people need. They need an encounter with the living God.
Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.
Jesus wants them to do more than simply go out and preach the good news. I think when we are in an evangelistic mindset, we are sometimes too focused on what we can or should do. Believe me when I say that I’ve been there. It totally stressed me out, because I kept thinking that this guy’s eternal destiny was riding on how I answered his questions. But in telling the disciples to pray, Jesus is bringing their focus to God and reminding them that this is His harvest.
What is the outcome of this prayer?
The short answer is that we don’t know how God might answer this prayer. Does Jesus tell us to pray for more workers of the harvest, because God wants us to go and be those workers? Does Jesus tell us to pray for more workers of the harvest, because He will provide? This is a case, where there is some tension, because there is no tidy and neat answer. We don’t know how God might answer this prayer.
It’s like the story of Abraham. He is called out of his father’s land and God tells Abraham that he will make his descendents as the stars of the sky. But, for many years, Abraham inhabits a place of tension, because he’s getting older, his wife is getting older and it does not appear that the promise is any closer to be fulfilled. The tension is ultimately only resolved with the birth of Isaac, but in the meanwhile, Abraham is probably wondering how God will fulfill this promise, when he is almost as good as dead (Hebrews 11: 12) How can God answer this prayer? What can God possibly do in this circumstance?
In the same way, we can wonder how God will answer when we ask him to send workers into his harvest field. Will give us an opportunity to share His good news? Will He send someone else? Might He even speak directly to the person in question?
As much as praying for others, Jesus is telling us that we should be people of compassion. Jesus is telling us to have compassion and pray for others. The people in this world, who are living without the good news and who need both physical and emotional healing, are helpless and harassed and without a shepherd. They need our prayers. Yes, as I pray, maybe God will stirs my heart and maybe I will discover that I am the worker of the harvest that He is sending, or maybe He will send someone else. We may or may not be in the position to share the good news with them, but Jesus is telling us that we are definitely in the position of being able to pray for them.
I think that sometimes prayer seems like a “cop out,” as if I am telling someone that I am praying for them, and now I can ignore them and not even try to help them. I think that our approach to prayer, can be a cop out, but prayer itself is not a cop out, because through prayer, we are coming to the living God and asking him to intervene in a person’s life. We are asking the all-knowing God, who knows even the hearts of those we are praying for, to come to those people and to bring them someone, who they will listen to, who can speak the good news to them. It’s Jesus reminder to us that we serve the living God and that with Him all things are possible. He gives us hope.
