Taking Hope

Go ahead and find Matthew Chapter 9. We will be looking at verses 36-38. And I want to title this sermon Taking Hope.

One of the distinguishing qualities I have as a pastor is the fact that I lived a lot of life before I became one. What I mean by that is the fact that I did not get saved at a young age and accept a call to ministry early and then go straight to college then seminary and became a pastor in my early twenties. No, I was in my 30’s and had been in many different industries.

I have several years of experience that spanned between some law enforcement, HVAC, restaurant management, surveying, and working in the trailer mill. Now, I came to faith in my early twenties, in fact this month makes 17 years that I came to faith. So as I am preaching this sermon today, what I don’t want you to sit there and think is that I have no idea what it means to live a life outside of the pastorate. I know what each and every one of you go through as you wake up on Monday morning and go punch the clock at your job.

For more than a decade I was a Christian who did that. I have many stories that I could share from each job I had about taking hope where I was going. But I will be the first to tell you that I wasted opportunities that God had placed in front of me, and still do. But I want to do better. I think we all want to do better.

I am not sure about you all, but I was not saved during a church service. I was convicted and was being drawn. But my salvation occured during a conversation with a church member. Not even the pastor. Yes, people can come to faith because of ordinary church members being faithful in sharing hope with others.

You do not need some sort of seminary degree to share the gospel with others.

One of my favorite conversion stories is that of Charles Haddon Spurgeon who went on to be one of the most well known pastors ever, in fact he was given the moniker “Prince of Preachers”.

In January of 1850, a 15 year old Charles Spurgeon was headed to church. Only, that morning was a fierce snow storm. So instead of making the journey all the way to the church he was going to, he stops at one much closer. He enters the doors of a small primitive methodist congregation(much different than today’s methodist).

When he walks in, there are only a handful of people there in attendance. And in fact, the pastor was not there due to the weather. There was a man, probably a deacon or a respected man in the congregation who did not have the ability to preach, who got up and was going to share that morning. There was no sermon preached. There was no altar call given. But God’s word was read and shared with the handful of people in attendance, including Charles Spurgeon.

The man got up there and read from Isaiah 45. Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. He go up there and simply explained what the text meant. And it was through the man, the ordinary man, getting up there and explaining for about 10 minutes what that text meant and was called by the Holy Spirit to repent and believe. No preacher, no real sermon. Only an ordinary man calling people to the hope of Christ through God’s word.

And that is what God is asking of each and every one of us. You do not need some kind of fancy education or specialized training. Only compassion, desire, and opportunity.

We often tie in evangelism(which is what we are talking about) to missions. You think that you have to go somewhere to be able to tell people about having hope in Jesus. Or you think that people in other places need it more than people here. Those are lies that I would say were probably created by Satan himself to distract believers from taking hope to the people that are close to them.

I am going to work on lining up some trips for us to take so that we can take hope to others. We won’t even call them mission trips. We might just call them hope trips. And it could be an event right here in Albemarle or a day trip to our Baptist Children’s Home or a Baptist on Mission site. Or we may find some in the future where we hop on a plane and go and take hope with us.

It doesn’t take hopping on a plane for God to use you. God uses ordinary people each and every day to take hope to others. He can and will use each of us to do that very thing.

I want to share with you today the means in which God opens up the door for us to take hope to others. Every time that we are with someone else, God is giving us an opportunity to take hope. It can be at school, at work, at the store, at the nursing hope while we are visiting family, at the hospital, at home when you are in the yard and the neighbor says hi.

Maybe we need to switch our thinking. Stop looking at these conversations as inconveniences and start looking at them as an opportunity.

In our text today, God gives us a layout of why and how we are to take hope with us as we go.

Matthew 9:36–38 ESV

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.”

Prayer

God Gives Us Compassion

What is compassion? It is concern. In our passage, Jesus is in the synagogues in different cities and villages and he is proclaiming the gospel. Verse 35 says the gospel of the kingdom. So what is that? (gospel presentation)

As he is teaching, Jesus has compassion on the people.

Matthew 9:36 ESV

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

Jesus sees the people. The people are harassed and helpless. Now, the picture that the text is painting for us is not that the people showed up physically beaten and mangled. So what does it mean that they came to Jesus harassed and helpless?

In the society that they were living in, the spiritual leaders had put pressure on them. They had added in rules and regulations that were never meant to be there. They had increased what was asked of the people. Because of that, there was this heavy spiritual burden that was on them.

Not only that, there was every day life that was a burden. They were being oppressed by the Roman Empire. They were dealing with poverty and sickness. They were dealing with anxiety and worry. Because of every day struggles, they felt hopeless. They were truly harassed and helpless.

But Jesus saw them. The same Jesus that tells us

Matthew 11:28–30 ESV

28 Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

I just want you to know that it doesn’t matter what it is you are carrying with you, Jesus can handle it. Financial burden, Jesus can handle it. Cancer, Jesus can handle it. A marriage that is on the rocks, Jesus can handle it. Selfishness or greed, Jesus can handle it.

It doesn’t matter what it is, Jesus is the answer. He takes our problems on him and he gives us hope. I want you to know that you need to give it to Jesus. Pursue Jesus. Lay your worries and cares on Him. Why? Because he proved he can handle it when he went to the cross and took our sins on him. He is the one who paid that price. If he can pay the price of sin, he can handle any problem you bring him.

That is what makes him a good shepherd. In our text, it says that the people were like sheep without a shepherd. What does a shepherdless sheep do? They wander. They try to take care of things on their own. They get lost. They starve because they don’t know where the good grass is. They thirst because they don’t know where the water is. So what does that sheep need? They need a shepherd.

Every single one of us here today need a shepherd. And not just any shepherd. We need God. We need Jesus who is the good shepherd. Stop trying to do it on your own. We do not know what is best, but Jesus does. So go to him. He is going to give you hope and love and compassion.

Not just him showing you compassion. But him giving you the sense of compassion for others. This is where we need to take what Jesus does and do the same. He had compassion on the people because they were hurting and needed hope.

When I leave here and go into our city, I am surrounded by people who are hurting and in need of hope. So, the only reason that I have a heart for hope is because God gives me compassion for others. He gives me the ability to remember that I was once without hope. That until March 29th, 2009 I was dead in my sins. I was a dead man walking. But God gave someone compassion. Compassion to share the hope of Jesus with me.

I want us to remember to the time before we came to faith. Imagine that the person who shared the gospel with you would have never had the compassion that they had for people who needed hope. And my prayer is that God will increase that compassion inside of you for others to experience that same hope that you have in Jesus.

God Gives Us Desire

Not only does God give us compassion for others, but he gives us desire. You can have compassion and never act on it. But when it turns to desire, you can no longer resist it.

When I think about this, I think back to when me and Brittany were just dating. Now, we had a fairly short timeline dating compared to a lot of couples today. We began dating on February 14th and we began talking about marriage within 6 months or so. Now the difference in thoughts and desires. I was thinking from the very first day that I might want to marry her. But I did not yet have the desire. The desire eventually came and I bought a ring and we were engaged in December of that year.

Or maybe one that I know we could all identify with. You hear about this new restaurant in town. You know they are open and you enjoy the style of food that they serve. You are thinking about going and checking them out. But then you run into someone who has been there. They start talking about what they had there. They talk about the atmosphere of the restaurant, the smell, the taste of the food. And then it is almost like a switch flips in you. You can almost taste and smell it yourself.

Now when that happens, there isn’t much that is going to stop you from going and eating at that restaurant. That is what desire is.

When God saves us and he gives us compassion, that compassion turns into desire. I want to see people come to faith. I want to see the kingdom of Jesus Christ grow. I want to see our church grow. I want to see our city turned upside down because of ordinary people like you and I taking the message of Jesus to the harassed and the helpless.

If you are a Christian, I want you to think back to right when you came to faith. Maybe it was even the first time that you have ever heard the gospel clearly explained to you. And you thought to yourself that everyone needs to hear about this. You had this fervor, this desire for sharing hope with others. Is it still there?

(stop and pray for a desire to share the gospel with others)

So we have seen that God gives us compassion and that he gives us desire. Lastly in our text, we see that God gives us opportunity.

God Gives Us Opportunity

I would venture to say that opportunity has never lacked for any of us to take hope to others. A couple of weeks ago I shared some statistics. One of them is that in a 1 mile radius of where we are right now, 75% of the people have zero involvement in church. They may say that they are believers, but they aren’t coming together with other believers and being filled with hope each and every week. I would venture to say that they are not believers at all. And even in the 25% that are involved in church, which might mean going to church twice a year, that those people do not find their hope in Jesus Christ.

Even Jesus said this about the crowds he was with.

Matthew 9:37 ESV

37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;

The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. Our modern culture has really changed how we view work. Up until the late 1800’s, the concept of retirement was unheard of. You didn’t stop working. You didn’t age out. Imagine in Jesus’s time and he says this. The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few. But I know that a lot of you have worked for years, so you guys just enjoy your retirement. Go and enjoy your vacation to Greece. Be sure to enjoy your Caesar Security Check.

No. The work never stops. The harvest demands the dedication of the workers. What if the person who shared the hope of Jesus with you when you came to faith decided to take that day off?

The harvest is plentiful. Nearly 75% of the people around here have nothing to do with a church. I would love to come next Sunday and we don’t have enough room for people in here because the church went out and shared the hope of Jesus as much as they could this week. What kind of a dent could we make in that 75% that aren’t involved in church. The 3,300 people that are within a mile of us need to hear the message of hope that is only found in Jesus Christ.

So God gives us opportunity. When you leave here today and you go get lunch, go to the grocery store, go home and sit outside and enjoy the beautiful day that God has given us and you speak to your neighbor, God is giving you and me and opportunity to take hope with us. God does not leave this up to the elite of the elite of Christians.

Be like the church member at Hillside Baptist who sat with me and answered my questions and pointed me to the hope of Jesus. Be like the ordinary member of that primitive methodist church that Charles Spurgeon walked into on that snowy morning and was faithful and read some scripture and gave a devotion. Be the ordinary Christian that the world around us needs and share your faith.

It is simple to share the gospel with others. There are countless tools for you to use. I have one called life on mission that is an app that interactively walks you through a gospel presentation with the other person. But you can just keep it short in a conversation. Something as simple as saying

“You know that God created man in his image. But because of sin, we have been led into brokenness. We can try to fix it on our own, but we can’t. That is why God sent Jesus, his only son, to go to the cross and die for our sins. He was fully God and fully man, so he was able to bear the weight of our sin. He rose from the grave 3 days later and proved that he was God. When we believe that he did that for us, we are saved. Then we start following him wherever he leads us. Do you want to follow Jesus?”

It doesn’t take much to share the gospel with others. It only takes compassion, desire, opportunity, and then action. So that is how we are going to end our service. I want us to look at verse 38 and we are going to do what Jesus is telling us in this verse.

Matthew 9:38 ESV

38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

We are going to end our sermon today in prayer. I am going to pray for God to send laborers, which is us, into his harvest. But I am also going to pray that God gives us the boldness to do other things that we feel led to do as well.

Making a public declaration that we are following him through baptism

Step into a ministry role here at the church (children and welcome team)

Accept God’s leading into vocational ministry

Prayer