The Harvest
The Harvest; NV 4/17/05 am / Matthew 9:35-38 & Luke 10:2
OS: 1 Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant. (Mark McCurry / Community Outreach)
I. Community / Worldwide Outreach - the overall ministry of the church.
A. We exist to glorify God through helping others know Jesus, grow to be like Him, and show Him to the world.
B. Discipleship is the key to our fulfilling that mission.
C. Understand Mission!
1. God gives a mission because its good – not because He wants us to be burdened.
2. Not like church used to be – go to church on Sunday to take your punishment for all your sins.
3. The greatest thing you can ever do in life is to help another person.
4. If you’re frustrated in your Christian life, you feel as though something just isn’t the way it should be – maybe it’s because you haven’t grasped the mission.
II. Reminder – We are in the people business.
A. We want to be the church that God wants us to be!
B. This church belongs to Jesus – “I will build My church”
C. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, will all our mind – Love our neighbor as ourself.
D. We are to go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teach them to obey all the things that Jesus has commanded.
E. That’s church – People business.
III. If you want to be a disciple of Jesus you must be about the harvest – planting seed for the harvest.
A. The farmer that spends too much time in the barn will starve.
B. A church that places their identity in what they do on Sunday will die.
1. Sunday worship is only a minute part of being the church.
2. Our greatest work when we are a disciple of Jesus is done out there, not in here.
TS] Two passages this morning – 2 - 3 Matthew 9: 35-38 & Luke 10:2
ὁ μὲν θερισμὸς πολύς, οἱ δὲ ἐργάται ὀλίγοι· 38δεήθητε οὐ̂ν του̂ κυρίου του̂ θερισμου̂ ὅπως ἐκβάλῃ ἐργάτας εἰς τὸν θερισμὸν αὐτου̂.
PQ: As disciples of Jesus what do we learn about the harvest?
I. 4 The Harvest is Plentiful.
A. For some reason over the past years someone has tricked us into believing that the American culture is no longer receptive to the truth about God.
1. We have a world of people out there to reach. A world of people who need good news; A world of people who need healing physically, spiritually, and emotionally; A world of people who feel harassed and helpless without anyone who cares.
2. According to a recent poll of American young adult men, 48% believe that most of the problems in the world today are a result of man himself. Only 41% indicated agreement that Jesus has provided the way to know God personally. Only 29% could correctly state how one becomes a Christian. But 67% were interested in knowing more about Christianity.
What’s Gone Wrong With The Harvest. James Engel and Wilbert Norton
B. Since 9/11 (actually before) there has been a shift in the values of America.
1. Evident in the last couple of elections.
2. 5 Notice these two examples: (RD – April 2005, “New Proof Prayer Works” / US News & World Report – Dec 2004 “The Power of Prayer”) Two of Many
C. 6 Digress for a moment – Have you ever wondered why the Harvest is always plentiful?
1. There has always been, and will always be pain, suffering, and death in the world. – Life will always be not fair.
2. Interesting – It was fine and dandy until the devil came along, and in his desire to destroy people he actually fuels a need and desire for God.
3. Like – Pulling corn, beans, or any vegetable & fruit to eat (you have to check to be sure) proper timing is a major concept of proper harvesting.
TS] There is no problem with the harvest – the harvest is plentiful. The problem is with the workers.
II. 7 The workers are few.
A. To be a disciple is to be a worker in the harvest
1. Church – harvest team
2. A German soldier was wounded. He was ordered to go to the military hospital for treatment. When he arrived at the large and imposing building, he saw two doors, one marked, "For the slightly wounded," and the other, "For the seriously wounded."
He entered through the first door and found himself going down a long hall. At the end of it were two more doors, one marked, "For officer" and the other, "For non-officers." He entered through the latter and found himself going down another long hall. At the end of it were two more doors, one marked, "For party members" and the other, "For non-party members." He took the second door, and when he opened it he found himself out on the street.
When the soldier returned home, his mother asked him, "How did you get along at the hospital?"
"Well, Mother," he replied, "to tell the truth, the people there didn’t do anything for me, but you ought to see the tremendous organization they have!"
The soldier’s comment describes many churches in our day: really organized, but accomplishing little.
3. What we have to do is, be organized about the business! – People Business.
B. 8 There are only two questions that really matter:
1. What is our business?
2. How is business?
C. Why is business pretty lousy in most churches compared to the 1st century church?
1. Some say, we are to busy, and feel we have enough problems of our own to take on helping someone else.
2. Could it be because we’ve lost our identity since the first century?
3. They were centered on Jesus (Disciples) – we’ve become centered on Sunday service. (Members)
TS] Give it some thought – the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.
III. 9 The first step in the harvest is to ask.
A. Hadden Robinson - To confess to you that I have had a life-long struggle sitting at the feet of Jesus is something I do with a great deal of embarrassment. Because when I read the New Testament, I discover that in the ministry of our Lord, prayer was absolutely crucial. For me, prayer is preparation for the battle. For Jesus, it seemed to be the battle itself. For Jesus, prayer was like running the marathon, and ministry was like going to receive the gold medal. Prayer was like taking the final examination, and ministry was like going to receive the diploma. Where did he sweat great drops of blood? It was not at Pilate’s hall. It was not as he staggered under the load of the cross up Golgotha’s hill. It was in the Garden of Gethsemane. The writer to the Hebrews tells us that with strong cryings and tears Jesus made his petitions to God. Had I had been there in that hour of his agony and watched the way he suffered, I would have despaired of the future. I think I would have said, “If he’s behaving this way when all he’s doing is praying, what in the world is he going to do when he faces a crisis? It’s too bad he can’t be like his three sleeping friends. They found a spiritual peace in the midst of the storm.” But when the crisis came, Jesus went to the cross in triumph. It was his three friends who fell back and fell away.
B. To be a worker in the harvest begins on our knees, and church its time to pray.
1. Our history – It all started when we started to pray.
C. 10 Why we must pray for the workers and harvest:
1. :The harvest is now – The best time to do something worthwhile is between yesterday and tomorrow.
2. :The harvest is plentiful - If a fruit is ripe and it is not picked, it will drop and be destroyed.
3. :The harvest must be seen for the worker in us to come out. So prayer is a necessity.
TS] 11 ὁ μὲν θερισμὸς πολύς, οἱ δὲ ἐργάται ὀλίγοι· 38δεήθητε οὐ̂ν του̂ κυρίου του̂ θερισμου̂ ὅπως ἐκβάλῃ ἐργάτας εἰς τὸν θερισμὸν αὐτου̂.
Working in the Lord’s field is difficult, and comes with a price. It all boils down to our willingness to pay the price.
12 1 Corinthians 3 6 I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. 7 So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. 8 The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building. (People Business)
13 A Missionaries account: Psalm 126 5 Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. 6 He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.
I was always perplexed by Psalm 126 until I went to the Sahel, that vast stretch of savanna more than four thousand miles wide just under the Sahara Desert. In the Sahel, all the moisture comes in a four month period: May, June, July, and August. After that, not a drop of rain falls for eight months. The ground cracks from dryness, and so do your hands and feet. The winds of the Sahara pick up the dust and throw it thousands of feet into the air. It then comes slowly drifting across West Africa as a fine grit. It gets inside your mouth. It gets inside your watch and stops it. The year’s food, of course, must all be grown in those four months. People grow sorghum or milo in small fields.
October and November...these are beautiful months. The granaries are full -- the harvest has come. People sing and dance. They eat two meals a day. The sorghum is ground between two stones to make flour and then a mush with the consistency of yesterday’s Cream of Wheat. The sticky mush is eaten hot; they roll it into little balls between their fingers, drop it into a bit of sauce and then pop it into their mouths. The meal lies heavy on their stomachs so they can sleep.
December comes, and the granaries start to recede. Many families omit the morning meal. Certainly by January not one family in fifty is still eating two meals a day. By February, the evening meal diminishes. The meal shrinks even more during March and children succumb to sickness. You don’t stay well on half a meal a day. April is the month that haunts my memory. In it you hear the babies crying in the twilight. Most of the days are passed with only an evening cup of gruel.
Then, inevitably, it happens. A six-or seven-year-old boy comes running to his father one day with sudden excitement. "Daddy! Daddy! We’ve got grain!" he shouts. "Son, you know we haven’t had grain for weeks." "Yes, we have!" the boy insists. "Out in the hut where we keep the goats -- there’s a leather sack hanging up on the wall -- I reached up and put my hand down in there -- Daddy, there’s grain in there! Give it to Mommy so she can make flour, and tonight our tummies can sleep!"
The father stands motionless. "Son, we can’t do that," he softly explains. "That’s next year’s seed grain. It’s the only thing between us and starvation. We’re waiting for the rains, and then we must use it." The rains finally arrive in May, and when they do the young boy watches as his father takes the sack from the wall and does the most unreasonable thing imaginable. Instead of feeding his desperately weakened family, he goes to the field and with tears streaming down his face, he takes the precious seed and throws it away. He scatters it in the dirt! Why? Because he believes in the harvest (Italics added).
The seed is his; he owns it. He can do anything with it he wants. The act of sowing it hurts so much that he cries. But as the African preachers say when they preach on Psalm 126, "Brother and sisters, this is God’s law of the harvest. Don’t expect to rejoice later on unless you have been willing to sow in tears."
How much would it cost you to sow in tears? I don’t mean just giving God something from your abundance, but finding a way to say, "I believe in the harvest, and therefore I will give what makes no sense. I’ll take a chance and sow some seed in the lives of those I work with, go to school with, or old friends I haven’t seen in a while. I’ll get on my knees and pray for those that don’t know Jesus, and I’ll pray for a great sending out of workers and harvest for Northview.
The world would call me unreasonable to do this -- but I must sow regardless, in order that I may someday celebrate with songs of joy."