Amazing Potential

Amazing Potential

Matthew 9:35–38 (ESV)

35 And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for 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 laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

The move to St Peter’s signals a new season for Grace Covenant Church.

This new season will require a different level of commitment.

Commitment to Christ

Commitment to Prayer

Commitment to the Church

Commitment to each Evangelism.

Of course, Changing locations doesn’t change us but it sure does give us an opportunity to have fresh energy and enthusiasm in a new location with a new neighborhood.

Do I expect that our intrusion into this neighborhood will be easy?

No I don’t think it will be. But hard doesn’t mean without bearing fruit.

I don’t know of any converted to Christ through our ministry this year.

That means that virtually no one was brought to Christ and folded into our fellowship through our witness last year. This was not an anomaly. There is a characteristic pattern

But you know as well as I do that beneath any kind of sociological explanations about how godless our culture is and the general indifference of the American church there is another one which could so easily remain hidden.

And the reason is this: we are not winning unbelievers to faith in Christ. People are not being saved and brought into the family of the redeemed.

“Might 2023 be Harvest Time at GCC?”

Might this be the year when something breaks loose inside of us that sends us out with power like Jesus “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10)

I know this has to do with me, this has to do with the elders. Am I and are we broken enough, yielded enough, loving enough.

Maybe not. But I have a feeling—and I think it is from the Lord—that something new is going to happen in ‘2023.

It is not for nothing that the Lord has moved our church. I think this is about far more than just not having to set up and tear down every week.

What are we doing to underscore how important this move is?

We have called a corporate fast for the extent of Advent.

· To have power in personal witness

· That God might give a spreading hunger for fervent and extended prayer,

· That God would give us little victories that will lead to greater victories

· The surest sign that God is about to send power upon us is a great movement of prayer in our midst.

That’s what I want to talk about today:

God is free in his dispensations of mercy. But this I do know that before God enables his people to bring in a harvest, he pours out a Spirit of prayer upon them.

We have a need to be Filled with Holy Spirit

The text of the morning, Matthew 9:35–38, describes a situation similar to ours. It also tells us how Jesus responds to that situation.

All I want to do is lead you this week in obeying the command of our Master given in the text.

1. There is a need which Jesus finds, a spiritual poverty among the people.

Verse 36: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

People without Christ are like sheep without a shepherd.

They will soon run out of pasture and starve, or they will get lost or caught in some thicket and die.

And in the meantime, they are harassed, wearied, and helpless.

Now the unbelievers you know may not seem to fit that description.

But if you see them with the eyes of Christ and are not misled by the shell of self-assurance,

you will recognize sheep who desperately need a shepherd.

And that probably means they are also without Christ who always moves his people into fellowship. There is the need: these people, no matter how good or bad, are not saved.

Those without Christ cannot know ultimate meaning in life, they cannot have a purified, clean conscience before God,

and without Christ they have no hope of eternal life.

Having Compassion

2. Jesus had compassion on them. The word means, literally, to be moved in one’s stomach with pity.

Do you remember the last time you felt real strong pity?

And I have asked myself and tested myself: do I feel that pity for my unbelieving neighbors, family members? Ah, there’s our need.

Our need is to feel compassion because of their need.

Our need is to care and love like Jesus did.

He was so much a man for others! We need to be honest and admit that compassion does not come natural to us.

Christlike compassion is a work of grace in our hearts and, for that reason, the product not of works, but of prayer. “He saw the crowds and had compassion for them.”

Seeing the Potential

3. Jesus saw an amazing potential.

Not just a helplessness, people harassed found, and a compassion felt, but now a potential seen.

Verse 37: “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful.’”

The metaphor changes.

Unbelievers are not only like sheep who are in trouble. They are also like wheat that can be harvested. There is potential salvation.

If we need the eyes of Christ to see the lostness of people and the compassion of Christ to feel pity for people, then we need just as much the expectancy and hopefulness of Christ that anticipates harvest time.

Do you look upon your neighbors and colleagues and classmates and associates with the lively sense that here is a potential saint?

It has probably been so long since the Lord has used most of us to lead a person from unbelief to faith, that we really wonder if there is any potential left.

We still know from Scripture that there is terrible privation; we still feel some compassion when we let ourselves think about it; but potential?

We wonder. Could it ever be harvest time in my life after so many years of fruitlessness? The answer to that question is a resounding Yes!

4. Pray in the Harvest

That leads us to the fourth and final observation. Not only did Jesus find a helplessness among the people, and feel compassion, and see a potential harvest, he commanded us to pray the harvest in.

“The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few, therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (verse 38).

The strangeness of this command points to something very important. It is strange that the farm hands should be told to beg the owner of the farm to send out more workers into his harvest.

Surely Jesus doesn’t mean to imply that God doesn’t know there is a shortage of reapers! And surely he doesn’t mean that God doesn’t care whether the harvest comes in!

Why, then, are the farm hands told to beg the farmer to get more help?

There is only one possible answer.

God has willed that his miraculous work of harvesting be preceded by prayer. He loves to bless the world. But even more, he loves to bless the world in answer to prayer.

John Piper

It is God’s way before he does a great work to pour a Spirit of supplication upon his people so that they plead for the work.

Therefore, the sign that God is going to bring in the harvest at GCC will be a widespread movement of prayer among you people.

If in response to this message there is no new movement to pray, then I will not be encouraged to expect that 2023 will be a year of harvest.

I would press on to labor in the Word and hope that perhaps after another year of humbling me and purifying me, God might be pleased to answer my prayer.

If in his sovereign kindness he pours out upon you the Spirit of compassion and supplication and there is a great movement of prayer, then we would begin to count the days till harvest begins.

In summary, then, First, there is a great need in Stowe, just as there was in Palestine—people without faith in Christ are like sheep without a shepherd.

no matter how goal-oriented and self-assured they seem.

Second, we have need of compassion for these people. We need to feel pity for them, pity that makes us earnest and concerned and engaged for their eternal welfare.

Third, we need to see the potential of conversion. We must look not to our failures and incompetence’s.

The harvest we want is, in any case, impossible with men.

The potential all lies with God. “What is impossible with men is possible with God.” With God, helpless sheep become a plentiful harvest.

Fourth, we must pray to the Lord of the harvest. See the desperate need of men and women with the compassion of Jesus; and then experience a potential harvest that is reaped by prayer.

An Invitation

We are a needy people.

There is power at our disposal in prayer that we have only begun to tap.

We are praying that all the members of our church apply themselves to prayer throughout the period of Advent.

There are three invitations I would like to give.

Don’t say no to until you have asked Christ what he wants you to do.

We urge every member to fast this week.

Fast for a harvest time at Grace, for your own heart (that it senses the need, feel the compassion, see the potential, and stay fervent in prayer,

for your brothers and sisters the same, for persons you know outside Christ.

The reason I call for fasting is because Jesus taught us to fast in Matthew 6:16–18,

and because saints from OT times through all of church history have sought the Lord with prayer and fasting in times of desperate need.

Fasting strengthens your faith by certifying through pain that you really care.

Fasting says to God: I want the answer to my prayer more than I want food and other things in my life. I want you more than comfort. I hunger, O God, to be aflame with righteousness and love.

If you have never fasted before, perhaps the Lord is saying, “This is the week.” Join us in this corporate fast.

Consider before the Lord whether the effort to join us in this fast which would be your way of saying, “Do it, God. O, do it at Grace.”