What is anMVP

What is an MVP? Those players have deemed to be the most valuable players for the games they were in. They had the most impact on that one game and were honored for their efforts.  Every year they elect someone as the most valuable player for the Superbowl. They have crowned the hero among heroes for that day. All of us here tonight have heroes in our life. All of us could name people in our lives that are incredibly valuable to us. Our spouses, our children, our friends, maybe a coach or a teacher. These are the people that have made a difference in our lives. They’ve taught us, loved us, cared for us, and led us. But if we had to pick the most valuable person from our lives, who would it be? Now, of course, most Christians wouldn’t hesitate to say, “Jesus Christ is my most valuable person.” And hopefully, that would be the case. But do we really understand what that means? Do we really understand what it means to say that Jesus is the most important person in my life? It’s so much more than just a cliché. It’s a lifestyle.

MATT 9:35-28

"And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they were faint and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith He unto His disciples, 'The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth laborers into His harvest.

As I grew I loved to play basketball, it wasn’t my desire to be the star, captain point guard of the team. I just wanted to make the team get a uniform. I would rather play ball than eat. I remember there was a time when I ran away from home, only to go down 2 houses away from my house and all I thought I needed was my bball. I was 6 yrs old.

Now, the text marks a transition point in Matthew's planning. Systematically, are elements of the Kingship of Jesus Christ. He began with the ancestry of the King, the genealogy in chapter 1. Then the arrival of the King, the virgin birth. Then the anticipation of the King, the fulfillment of all of those Old Testament prophecies. Then came the announcer of the King, John the Baptist; and then the approval of the King in His baptism. As the Father said, "This is My beloved Son in Whom I am well pleased." Then the attack on the King as Satan met Him in temptation. Then the affirmations of the King as He taught in chapter 5, 6, and 7 and affirmed the authority of the Word of God.

And then most recently we've been looking at the attestations of the King. The miracles in chapters 8 and 9 that attest to His deity.

we meet the associates of the King as He calls into service the twelve and sends them out with the message of the Kingdom. But between the attestation and the miracles and the section on the disciples in this very small transition taking us out of His miracle ministry and into His discipling ministry, away from the multitudes and toward the individual discipline of His apostles. And that transition is very important. Jesus sees the vastness of the task and realizes that He has to have some help, and so

We see three things as we look at the Lord here. His ministry (HEALING preaching and teaching) its motives (COMPASSION) and method PRAYER.

"Here is His ministry." "He went about all the cities and villages," and we remember from Josephus that, in Galilee, there were probably at least 3 million people living in about 204 cities and villages, and He moved about all these places, "teaching in their synagogues and preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people." Whether they were tucked in little obscure hamlets on the hillsides, or whether they were down in the heat of the valley, or whether they were in the large cities that ringed the sea itself, He went everywhere, and even in between, in the vineyards and the fields, and He met the people, and He met their needs.

"He was teaching in their synagogues." The synagogues were the place of teaching. The Yiddish word for synagogue is still the word schul, S C H U L, much like our word school. They saw the synagogue as the place where they met to be instructed in the Word of God; and when they came to the synagogue, and they came not only on the Sabbath, but at least two other times during the week, plus on every other festival day, feast day, and holy day. And every time they came, an officer would read from the Pentateuch, the Law; and then another one would read from the prophets; and then someone would translate that Hebrew into Aramaic, which was the common language of the day; and then someone else would stand up and give an expository sermon from one or both of those passages.

Philo, the historian, wrote that "The main feature of a synagogue was the detailed reading and exposition of Scripture." They came there to hear the Scripture and to have it explained to them. That is why in Berea, when Paul spoke, they searched the Scriptures to see if, in fact, these things were really true. Romans 10:14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?

EXPLAIN THIS!!!!!! READ THE BIBLE FOR YOURSELF

And there was a custom known as quote-unquote the freedom of the synagogue, and the freedom of the synagogue provided that any visiting rabbi or a distinguished guest could be the one to give the exposition or the sermon. Consequently, our Lord took advantage of that all over Galilee. He would go into the synagogues, wherever they were meeting, and when it came time for the sermon, as a distinguished teacher, He would stand and He would interpret the Old Testament which had been read.

Paul writing to Timothy says, "Until I come, give your attention to reading the text, explaining the text, and applying the text." So our Lord's pattern of ministry was this. When He gathered together with the religious people, when He gathered with them in the synagogue, He taught them the meaning of the Scripture. He exposited the Old Testament, a didactic, expository teaching ministry; and we still believe that that is the mandate for the people of God when they come together to be taught the meaning of the Word of God.

Secondly, it says He preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. The word here is puroso, to herald or to proclaim or to announce, to make a public proclamation. Outside the synagogue, on the streets, the highways, the hillsides, by the sea, in a house, anywhere and everywhere He went, He was announcing the Kingdom. He was proclaiming the Kingdom. He was affirming that God was the King, and that God had a Kingdom, and that God was offering that Kingdom, and there was a standard for entry into that Kingdom, and He was telling them what that was. And that entering into the Kingdom brought about tremendous and eternal blessing, and so He was proclaiming the Kingdom.

The church gathers to be instructed and scatters to proclaim. Our Lord has established the pattern. Everywhere He went, as summarized so marvelously in the Sermon on the Mount, He would announce that the Kingdom was at hand. He would announce that to be blessed, you must enter the Kingdom. He would announce that the entry into the Kingdom is the narrow way, but it is a way of blessedness. He was proclaiming the Kingdom. He was proclaiming salvation.

"He was healing every sickness and every disease among the people." As I've told you before, for all intents and purposes, in His lifetime, Jesus utterly banished disease from Palestine. In fact, John says in his Gospel that, "All the books of the world couldn't contain all of the things that He did." The miracles of chapter 8 and 9, and there are basically nine miracles, are only samples in various categories of expressions of power. By no means do they touch anywhere near the number of miracles that He did.

Now, why did He do these miracles? Why did He heal every sickness and every disease among the people? because it was a way to verify His message. You see, Jesus went into the synagogue and taught differently than all the other teachers. He went into the highways and byways and preached different than all the preachers. HIS miracles were verifiers of His message. The blind man had it right when he said, "We know that this Man must be of God." Nicodemus had it right when he said, "We know that no man can do the things that You do except God be with Him." Jesus said, "If you can't believe My Words, at least believe Me for the very works' sake." How else are you gonna explain these supernatural miracles? Has the Lord ever done anything for you, has he delivered you from any type of sickness disease, or circumstance.

His method was compassion. I think this is most, most important. I believe Jesus did these miracles to demonstrate the loving tenderness of the heart of God. I believe that Jesus wanted those people to know that God was not like the Pharisees said He was...but that God was compassionate. God was sympathetic. God was tender. God was loving. God was filled with kindness. God was merciful...I believe this is a part of Jesus' ministry, and I believe that it is essential in ours, as well.

You can teach the Word of God. You can proclaim the good news of the Kingdom and how to enter it, but you must also know that Jesus touched people where they hurt and was sympathetic and kind and caring and loving; and that's part of it, too. It's so important that people understand that. That's why Paul says, "If you speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not to love, you're nothing but noise. Sounding bronze and a tinkling cymbal."

"They were faint and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." He moves from His nature to the need, and He saw them in their real condition. He was not fooled by their religious fronts. He was not fooled by the façade, the superficiality. He said, "These people are desperately in need," and He uses two tremendously rich words. Faint and scattered abroad don't really translate the core of meaning. Askulmanoyand arimanoy, two tremendous words.

The first one can mean worn out, exhausted. It can mean beaten up, battered, mangled, ripped, torn, skinned alive. They were devastated. They were skinned, mutilated, worn out, exhausted, battered, bruised, beaten. The second word means to be thrown down, lying prostrate, totally helpless, and it's used in the Septuagint version of the Old Testament in Judges 4:22 to speak of a man who was lying dead with a spike driven through his temples...It means they were mangled and devastated and then thrown on the ground lying prostrate and utterly helpless. That's how He saw 'em. They...it was as if they had no shepherd.

Do you know who claimed to be their shepherds? The scribes and the Pharisees said they were the shepherds of indictment of their spiritual leaders. Their spiritual leaders didn't show 'em any pasture. Their spiritual leaders didn't feed them. Their spiritual leaders didn't bind their wounds. Their spiritual leaders literally mutilated them...They were flayed. They were mangled corpses, plundered by the scribes and the Pharisees, and now they were lying prostrate, devastated. It is a graphic picture of the uncaring, unconcerned leaders; and we see the weariness, the bewilderment, and the wounds that have left these people desolate. It happened because their shepherds...never helped them, but, rather, harmed them.

They're called again in chapter 10 verse 6, you see, "The lost sheep of the house of Israel," and the phrase literally means the sheep that have perished. The terrible indictment of their leaders. They were offering a religion that didn't lift burdens. It bound burdens on them. They were fooling around with subtle arguments about the law and their traditions. They were utterly indifferent to need. They coulda cared less.

In Matthew 24:23, Jesus says, "You devour widows' houses... You bind on My people...23:4 says...needless burdens."...And in 23:13, Jesus said, "You shut people out of the Kingdom."

The harvest in Isaiah 17 is judgment. Listen to Joel 3 verse 9. "Proclaim this among the nations: Prepare war! Makeup...wake up the mighty men! Let all the men of war draw near; let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, 'I am strong.' Assemble yourselves and come all ye nations, and gather yourselves together round about; there cause the mighty ones to down, O Lord." God calls the nations to judgment. "Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; for there will I sit to judge all the nations roundabout. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, get down; for the press is full, the vats overflow -- for their wickedness is great!...then this...Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision."

Now, I believe that when the Lord saw the multitudes, He thought of Joel's harvest...and it's a judgment that Joel spoke of. I believe our Lord saw consummation. He saw the eternal perspective. He didn't see people just in their current problem. He saw them as doomed to hell. In Matthew 13...the Lord, giving a parable said this. "Let both grow together...verse 30...until the harvest. And in the time of harvest, I will say to the reapers, 'Gather together first the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them. But gather the wheat into My barn.'" It is judgment, and it is a judgment on the multitudes, and some will be barned and some will be burned, but it is judgment.

Verse 39 same chapter. Tells you right here, "The enemy that sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are the angels." The harvest that He sees is not just a mission field. That isn't the perspective here. The harvest is the final judgment, the consummation, the end of the ages, the time of grief. That's what He sees. You find later on if you look at the Book of Revelation 14th chapter 14th verse, "And I looked, and hold, a white cloud; and upon the cloud one sat like the Son of Man, having on his head a golden crown and in his hand a sharp sickle. And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud, 'Thrust in thy sickle and reap; for the time is come for thee to reap, for the harvest of the earth is ripe.' And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped." Judgment. Judgment.

Listen, beloved, Jesus ministered to people because He loved them. He ministered to people because of their terrible condition, and He ministered to people because He could see their ultimate consummation; and if you've lost that vision, you've lost a major portion of your motive. Paul said, "Knowing...2 Corinthians 5...the terror of the Lord, we persuade men. We understand hell." Romans 12, Paul talked about the vengeance of God. Hebrews, the writer talks about it. "Men will die, and after that, the judgment." In 2 Thessalonians, the Apostle Paul painted such a vivid picture. "In the day when the Lord Jesus is revealed from Heaven with His mighty angels and flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power."

So easy for us to lose the sense of the imminence and inevitability of eternal judgment. There's no way to describe hell. Nothing on earth can compare with it. No living person can really comprehend it. No madman in the wildest flights of insanity ever beheld the borders of hell. No man in delirium's ever pictured a place so utterly terrible. No nightmare racing across a fevered mind ever produced a terror to match that of the mildest hell. No murder scene with splattered blood and mutilated bodies could ever suggest the revulsion that one glimpse of hell could suggest; and our Lord saw that...and He was moved...to reach out to people.

So our Lord saw the crowds. He taught them. He preached to them, and He healed them, because of His compass...compassion, their condition, and the ultimate consummation...I hope that speaks to your heart. It sure does to mine.

For just a moment, as we close, may I speak to you of His method? We'll get into this more in our future study, so I won't take time with it. But what was His method? Well, at the end of verse 37, He says, "The laborers are few." In other words, "I can't do it alone. The laborers are few."...What is that? That's the first part of His method. I call it insight. He has a threefold method, insight. First you have to understand the problem. What are you gonna do about it? What are you gonna do about a lost hell-bound world, a world of hurting people who need compassion? What are you gonna do about the condition of men and women who are trapped under those false shepherds who feed them lies that damn their souls? What are you gonna do?

First you have to have the insight to see that there's a problem, and you don't have enough people. That's insight. How many times in the Bible do you read this? "Watch and pray." Or this? "Be sober. Be vigilant." Or "Be alert." We've gotta know what's going on. Can you see the signs of the times? Can you see the needs of men? Are you really discerning? Do you look through the religious facades? Can you see past the phonies? Do you know how few real laborers there really are?

Like Ezra 8:15, Ezra says, "I viewed the people." Nehemiah twice says, "I viewed the walls." Have you viewed the scene? Do you understand? Seeing the need? Insight. God wants His people to see, and so He explains it to the disciples. You see, the harvest is so plenteous. I mean it'll include everybody, but the laborers are so few. Do you understand the...the problem?...The insight moves to the second element of His method, which I call intercession. Verse 38 doesn't say, "Now panic. Panic." Doesn't say, "Do it yourself, and do it as quick as you can."... Doesn't say, "Come up with a great program." It says, "Pray... pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest," oh, what a term, the Lord of the harvest. Do you know what an amazing thing. The very God who is the Lord of the harvest, that's a judgment term, the very God who is the judge, is the One we beseech to send the workers to prevent the people from getting to judgment. Marvelous.

There's a part of God that demands that judgment, and there's an attribute of God that seeks that no one be there. "Pray...He says...that the Lord of the harvest will send forth workers...is what it means in His...into His harvest." Before the final consummation, He...He sees the harvest as all this mass of people moving toward judgment. But before it gets there, "Pray that God will send forth workers." Isn't it amazing? Isn't it amazing that, in such desperation, He doesn't say, "Now, get outta here as fast as you can and do the job." He says, "Stop and pray."

It's like in the Book of Acts when the Lord met with them in the upper room. He says, "Now, you stay here, and you pray, and you don't go anywhere till the Holy Spirit comes, and then He'll send you out; but, for the moment, don't do anything." Pray, and do you notice what you're praying for? Doesn't say, "Pray for the lost." Doesn't say that. It says, "Pray for laborers." You can sit around and say, "Oh, Lord, save my old aunt. Lord, save my husband. Lord, save my neighbor. Oh, Lord, save my neighbor." And you just keep saying to yourself, "Well, they're not getting saved. I'm sure I'm just gonna keep praying. We keep praying."

Then all of a sudden start pray this way, "Lord, please send someone to reach my neighbor," and just keep praying that for a long time, and pretty soon you're gonna say to yourself, "Uh, I think maybe I oughta go."...You see, if all you're doing is praying for the person to be saved, you can keep 'em at arm's length. But as soon as you start praying for the Lord to send the person, you're gonna pretty soon feel like maybe you're the person who oughta go...and that leads you from intercession to involvement.

Verse 1 chapter 10, and that's exactly what happened. He said, "Now, you disciples pray," and then in verse 1, "When He had called to Him the twelve disciples, He gave them power against unclean spirits to cast them out, heal all manner of sickness, all manner of disease," and so forth, and He sent them.

First, that we have insight, that we understand...that we understand that people are lost, and there are few to reach them; and then that we begin to pray; and out of our prayers will come our involvement...

I'm not so concerned that y'all sign on the dotted line. I'm just concerned that you get on your knees. If you start praying for the lost long enough, I think God'll pull you right out into where they are. There's an interesting phrase in verse 38. It says, "He will send forth laborers." Uses a very strong Greek term that means to throw them out, to shove them out, to thrust them forth. Let God do it. Let God send 'em. So when faced with a need, we don't panic. We pray; and as we pray, we find that maybe we're gonna be the ones that are gonna do it, as the disciples prayed and found themselves to be the ones who were involved.