So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields. - Matthew 9:38
Jesus has a problem. The verse above is preceded by the observation that the harvest is great, but the workers are few. There just aren’t enough people willing to work for God. The answer? Ask Him to send laborers into the fields to pick the human fruit of off of the vines before they dry up, fall off, and die on the ground. Jesus spoke these words two millennia ago, and unfortunately He still has the same problem. A great harvest, plenty of people to pick from, but not enough workers.
Let’s zoom out of the biblical perspective for a moment and peer into the modern secular one. The world has a work problem. There are massive layoffs in certain sectors of industry. There are millions of people unemployed. Robots and AI are taking over jobs that humans typically do. Countless jobs are sent overseas or across the border where the labor is cheap. The cheap labor is performed by people who cannot afford to buy what they make. Government appears to paying some people who do not actually do any work but can. Businesses say they are hiring but do not return calls to applicants. Some of the highest paying jobs are in entertainment. Some of the lowest paying jobs are in fields that actually matter. Some of the best professions are known for burning out their professionals. And suddenly dignified work includes people who sell their bodies or photos and videos of themselves online, corrupting an entire generation. That’s a lot.
So whether we are talking about the secular realm or the sacred, there are looming concerns. What will be interesting is how all of this plays into prophetic predictions. That before Jesus descends, there will be a huge shift in the global economy, a limitation on purchasing and sales, and a unified alliance against the gospel…effectively restricting the work of the church. For the average Christian, that last concern might not matter so much. If a person is not serving God now in a time of relative peace, why would they do so when ideological, economic, and spiritual war is thick in the air? But consider, Jesus’ worldview. He sees a planet full of unsaved souls. He sees the movements of men to undermine His cause. He sees the proliferation of sin. He has a front row seat to the complex political maneuvers that will reshape human life. And in the midst of all of this, He is looking for laborers. For disciples who are willing to learn “on the job” and get to work pushing the gospel into spaces where it does not now have influence. He is not asking for every follower to do a worldwide work, just a personal work. A simple work. To put time and effort into forwarding the ambitions of heaven. To seek out people in society, in places of work, in classrooms, in families, who do not know the Lord. He wants those few to turn into the many who care enough to go after human beings who are drying up, falling away, and dying without a Savior, and lead them to the cross. Seriously, if this does not move you, you might need to question whether or not you are not already withering, falling, and dying yourself.
We will study Matthew chapters 10 and 11 this coming Sabbath and dive into The Life and Teachings of Jesus: Disciples. Our purpose will be to discover what it means to be a disciple of Christ and to look at some uncomfortable but encouraging things Jesus said about discipleship. While you might be tempted to sit this one out :-) I challenge you to lean in. Let us come together, let us worship and bow down, and kneel before the Lord our Maker this weekend.
Pastor Dean