976. Loving God with a Great-Commission Love for the World

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. We're continuing a study series called Loving God. Today's speaker is Dr. Sam Horn, former dean of the Bob Jones University Seminary. The title of his message is Loving God with a Great Commission Love for the World from Matthew 9, 35-38. I'm going to ask you to take your Bible to Matthew chapter 9. A few weeks ago, I have been thinking about this chapel for some time, but a few weeks ago we had a mission chapel and Dr. Cushman got up and had people turn to this very text and I'm thinking, oh man, this is going to be difficult because I have been thinking about this text for the sermon. But as I listen to his message, and frankly as God worked in my own heart about the message, I breathed a sigh of relief because we actually are looking at the same text from two different vantage points. So this morning as we come together, we're considering the idea of loving God, which we've been talking about all semester. And really out of that theme flows the idea that if we really are going to be loving God, part of that means loving what he loves. And so we're coming to a text this morning or a series of verses in a pericope in Matthew chapter 9 that lays out for us something that God is intensely passionate about. And if we're going to love God properly, we're going to have to look at this text of scripture and allow it to do more than inform us and impact us. We're going to have to allow the text to actually shape the way we think about loving God and what that looks like. So here's the question I want us to think about and really for the sake of time, I'm going to put the question and then we're going to jump right into the text to seek an answer for it. But all semester long we have been examining the idea, talking about the theme of God's love for us and we've been exploring that, the idea of loving God and particularly looking at the dimensions of that love that sort of help us to recognize that the only reason we are able to love him is because he first loved us.

And sort of being impacted and shaped by that concept. So when we think about the intense love that God has for his son and the intense love that he has for us, what could be so important to God that he would put the physical well-being of people who are the objects of that sort of intense love at risk. In other words, if God loves us with the intensity that the New Testament seems to indicate, if in fact we are the objects of his love to the degree that we have seen in the scriptures, what is it that would be so significant to God that he would put people that he loves to this degree in situations that would at times call for their very lives. And all you have to do is read a history of the church from the time of Jesus forward and you begin to recognize that this history has a significant segment or a significant chapter in the history is about those very sorts of people. That who in the will of God were called upon by God to take their life and shed their blood for something that God cared deeply about.

So whatever that is, it needs to shape our idea of loving God. So with that in mind, I would like you to take you to the text that we're looking at in Matthew chapter 9 and we're dropping right into the middle of a section of Matthew that is leading up to the commissioning of a group of men who are going to go and many of these men are going to be put into harm's way by the Lord himself. Let's begin reading in verse 35, 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 fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then he saith 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. What could be so important to God that he would take people that who were the special objects of his love, of his not just his general love, but of his specific intense love and put them in harm's way?

The answer is a harvest that he has been preparing. And we will never understand how to respond to that until we let Matthew talk to us a little bit from this text. And so I would suggest that one of the things that Matthew is doing is helping us to see what Jesus saw. If we're going to understand how to love God properly in view of the harvest that is a significant focal point for his attention and his work and by which he intends to receive glory, we're going to have to see, as we come to a passage like this, we're going to have to see what Jesus saw. So what did Jesus see?

Notice what you pick up in verse 36. When he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them. And here's what he saw when he saw the multitudes.

He uses two terms in the text to sort of help you understand what he saw when he looked at the crowds that he was ministering to. By the way, we just saw in verse 35 that he had been going throughout the region in all of the cities and in all of the villages. And if Josephus is at all to be believed, there were some 240 cities and villages that made up this region where Jesus was ministering.

So he had spent time going around these villages. In fact, if you go back to Matthew chapter 4 and you start looking at verse 23 through the end of the chapter, Matthew is bracketing something here. At the very beginning, after the baptism, we read that Jesus was going around these same villages. And then there's this long segment in Matthew beginning in chapter 5 that ends in chapter 9.

And the end bracket is verse 35, where he talks about sort of closing the gap now. He's coming back to this idea that he's been going around these villages and he has been seeing things. And what he has been seeing is a multitude of people in these villages who were faint and who were scattered.

Now these two words are very intense words. We don't have time this morning to mine out everything that Matthew intends by these words, but we could say it this way. When Jesus looked at the multitude and he uses these two ideas to tell you what he saw, he is telling you about a group of people who have been severely damaged. And all you have to do is go back in the chapters and start realizing what has been going on in the physical life of these people. And what has been happening to them in their spiritual context. And you would come to the conclusion that Jesus is articulating here that these people that he has been walking around in their cities and in their villages, are people who have been severely damaged and seriously demoralized by someone.

Someone has come into their midst and has wreaked havoc spiritually, physically, and in every way. And when Jesus comes to the end of this section of Matthew, he wants you to know what he sees. Now what's striking about this is that Jesus is coming, as it were, to his own house. He is coming to the land that belonged to Israel, that his father had given to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and to the patriarchs. He is coming to the very spot on the globe, to the physical place on the planet that God had given to his own people. As it were, he's coming to his own house and he is recognizing as he is in their midst that an enemy has been in this place and has been wreaking all kinds of damage.

He's been doing it physically, through disease. I mean, if you kind of go back and start reading in chapters 8 and 9, you find examples where Jesus is meeting up with people and he is healing their diseases. He is talking to people who have been spiritually afflicted by demonic activity. And you start looking at all of the different categories in which Jesus encounters people and you get to the end when Matthew sort of closes the loop and he kind of reminds you that Jesus has been going throughout the villages, just like he told you in chapter 4. And he says, now let me sum up for you in Jesus' own words what he saw. He saw his own people, his own portion of the kingdom, his own house as it were, vandalized, ruined and in a disastrous condition morally, physically and spiritually because of the work of an enemy. And Matthew is making that point very clear to the reader.

And that brings us to the second thing. That piece of information, as impacting as it is, will never shape us until we feel the way Jesus felt about what he saw. And the text is very clear about how Jesus felt when he moved among the people, when he encountered them in their daily life, when he was with them in their walk. When he stood with them in Capernaum and when he watched them at the shores of the Sea of Galilee, when he was with them in the city of Cana, when he was with them as they made their way to and fro about their business. And he began to realize that these people were leaderless, they were like sheep that had been abandoned by their shepherds and an enemy had come in and ravaged them and damaged them and demoralized them.

The text says that Jesus was moved with something. He was moved with compassion. And the term and the way that Matthew uses that phrase is not just that Jesus felt sorry for the people. This is a very deep inner heart sort of gut-wrenching emotion, pardon the sort of coarse expression of that, but it is a deep inner gut-wrenching expression that has the ability to sort of redirect a person's entire orientation, a person's entire life.

Let me give you an example of this. This is the kind of thing that would happen in the heart of a child as they watched a parent go through the ravages of a disease like cancer and be completely powerless to stop that disease from taking the life of somebody that they were deeply connected to. And as they watch this devastation, their heart being so moved internally that they dedicate the rest of their life to trying to find a cure for the disease that took their parent. That's the strength of the term that is being used here by Matthew. Jesus felt this way about what he saw.

And here's the bottom line. Until we feel this way about the condition of the people around us, we will feel sorry for them. We will give money to them. We might from time to time reach out to them.

We'll sing songs about them. We'll pray for them, but we will not be moved in our heart to sort of reorient our life so that we are actually committed to doing what Jesus is talking about here in this text to making a difference in the life of those sorts of people. That's the strength of which Matthew is pointing. That's sort of the context that Matthew is wanting to make sure we grasp as we get going into the next chapter where all of a sudden you see a group of men that are being commissioned to spend their entire life doing something about this harvest that Jesus is looking at. So we won't feel what Jesus felt until we see what Jesus saw.

And that brings us really to the third thing. If we're really going to get this text in perspective, we have to understand, we have to believe what Jesus knew. I mean, we have to be convinced of something that Jesus was convinced of. And that is this, that he is the answer to all of this devastation. I mean, when you really follow Matthew and you see what Matthew is doing, Matthew is introducing you to a person who has the right to come into this place and clean it up. He has the right and he doesn't just have the right to do this.

He actually has the ability to do this. And the way that Matthew sort of lays this out for you as he unfolds this in chapter four, in fact, it might be useful if you go back to chapter four for just a moment. And let's just take a moment and I know our time is short, but let's anchor our thinking in a particular text outside of Matthew nine. Go back to chapter four and look at verse 23 and just let your eye follow down as I point out a few observations about the text.

Jesus went about all Galilee, so we're in the same region, teaching in their synagogues and preaching or announcing the good news of the kingdom. And here is what it looked like when Jesus went about doing this. He was healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And then, of course, in verse 24, his fame went throughout all Syria and they brought unto him all sick people. And then there's sort of a further description of what these sick people were afflicted by. They were afflicted by all kinds of diverse diseases and torments and those which were possessed with devils or demons. And those who were lunatic and those who had the palsy and he healed them.

That's a summary of what is to come. And then you get into this sermon in chapters five, six and seven, where Jesus is laying out the fact that he really has come with a kingdom. That is, that is a kingdom of righteousness that is different than even the righteousness of the Pharisees. And the people, when he gets done preaching the sermon, the text says the people heard him gladly because he spoke to them as one having what?

Authority. And just so we don't miss the point, Matthew is going to take chapters eight and nine and he's going to show us how that authority actually worked when Jesus came to these multitudes. He healed people at a word. He opened the eyes of blind people. He cast out demons all throughout the chapter. You are being introduced to an individual who is in the middle of all of this devastation and he has the authority and he has the ability to do something about it.

And for two chapters, you're watching him actually do it. And here's the point that Matthew wants you to see. That this individual, Jesus of Nazareth, is actually the answer to all of the devastation. It's not just that Matthew wants you to see what Jesus saw and feel what Jesus felt. He wants you to believe and be convinced of something that Jesus knew and what Jesus knew was this. I am God's appointed one who is going to deal with every bit of this. And that brings us to the fourth thing and that is this. What did Jesus do about it?

What did he actually do about it? What is it that Jesus has done that we need to recognize? And here's the point. When we see what Jesus saw and when we feel what Jesus felt and we become convinced of what Jesus knew about himself, that he was in fact God's answer to all of this, then what Jesus comes to next makes a completely profound impact on our life.

And that is this. Jesus has been doing something for all of these chapters and he says it to his disciples. He says this, the harvest is plenteous. The harvest is plenteous. And here's what Jesus means by this.

Jesus is saying this to his disciples. I have been getting a harvest ready. I have been at work in my place. I have been at work among these people. I have been in these cities. I have been in these villages. I have been preaching and announcing a kingdom.

I have been displaying my authority and my power. I have been getting a harvest ready. And then he says something else that's very interesting. The laborers are what?

The laborers are few. And here's where I'm going to say something that I want you to think about. And I'm going to give you an opinion here. And the beauty of an opinion is you don't have to agree with it.

Right? I do want you to hear it and I do want you to think about it. And I want you to put it in the context of everything else that you've been listening to in terms of what Matthew has been communicating. Because I think what happens when we come to a text like this is we sort of have the idea that there's this massive harvest that is about to go to waste because there's a lack of what?

Of workers. And if we could just get more workers then we could go out and the harvest would be saved. And I'm not sure that's really the point that Jesus is trying to make. I think what Jesus is saying here is this. I have been getting a harvest ready and even with just a few workers I can get the harvest accomplished because I am the one who has prepared the harvest. And I am the one who is going to send out the reapers.

And that's the point I think that Jesus is making here. There is this harvest that he has been getting ready and you may look at this harvest. Here we are in a room and maybe there's a hundred of us and we're looking at an entire harvest that is ready to be reaped and we can almost say well what can we do? I mean how can we ever hope to reap a harvest that is this big and this ready when there's so few of us?

I mean look at us. Here we are in a room and we don't even fill up the whole room. And there's maybe a hundred of us and if we expand it out and we take every student in the student body and we fill up the chapel and we have some three thousand bodies in there. Even three thousand is almost nothing compared to the size of the harvest that needs to be reaped. What can so few of us do in view of the size of the harvest? And I think that misses the real point that Jesus is saying.

I have a harvest that I'm going to reap and I'm going to reap it with a few reapers. I mean think of what the implication of that statement is for the little group of us that are here. If we would grasp the intent of what Jesus had. Think of what could happen in light of what Jesus is doing and what Jesus is saying if this little group of a hundred and plus people were really to do what Jesus said to do and we were to go out and reap.

You say well how do I know that you really have the right opinion because that sort of goes contrary to a whole lot of mission sermons I've heard. In fact there goes a whole bunch of mission sermons I've preached. Well how many people did Jesus commission next in chapter 10? I mean there's a small group of men that get sent out into the harvest and by the time they're done. That little group has grown from a small little group of followers to in the book of Acts maybe a hundred and twenty. And they go out into this massive harvest and pretty soon there's three thousand of them two thousand of them then there's four thousand of them then there's another five and by the time you get to the end of book of Acts.

The gospel has gone to the very heart of Rome. And it started with just a few reapers that saw what Jesus saw felt what Jesus felt became totally convinced that Jesus was who he said he was and that he had come to do what he said he had come to do. And they understood and recognized what Jesus had done that he had prepared a harvest for them to reap. And that brings us into the final thing and that is this what is it that Jesus told us to do with all of this information.

I mean if we see what Jesus saw and we feel what Jesus felt and we become convinced of what Jesus knew about himself. And we recognize what Jesus has been up to for two thousand years he's been getting a harvest ready what he's doing all around us. He's getting a harvest ready what is it that Jesus wants us to do he gives us one statement in the text. And it is this pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest pray to the one who is owning this harvest pray to the one who is preparing this harvest pray to the pray to the Lord of the harvest and here's what you ask him ask him to send forth.

Ask him to thrust that's the idea to thrust out what? Laborers. Now here's my question. Who was Jesus physically talking to here? I mean we know from our understanding of inspiration that the application of this text is to every reader but when Jesus was articulating what Matthew later wrote down who was he probably talking to? Who was standing there physically hearing what Jesus was saying? We have indication of this in other texts we started the PowerPoint presentation earlier today with a verse out of John where Jesus is saying don't you know the harvest is or the fields are white into harvest remember that in John 4? Who was he talking to then and who is he probably talking to here in Matthew chapter 9? His disciples. And he says to those men now you need to pray that God will send forth thrust out laborers into this harvest and one chapter later who gets thrust out? This isn't a trick question. If you get it right you get another donut. Who gets thrust out?

Those men. So here's the point I think Matthew is trying to say to us when you get serious about the harvest and you pray this way what you're asking God to do is to thrust you into that harvest. Lord this is an immense harvest. You obviously care a great deal about it and this harvest is hostile to you. There is an enemy in this harvest field that is determined to destroy the harvest and to go after the harvesters and Lord it doesn't matter. This is a harvest that you care about so I want to go. I want to be a part of reaping that harvest because you love that harvest. You feel a certain way about that harvest you are convinced you know certain things about yourself that apply to that harvest and Lord I am convinced of all of that. I believe all of that and I want you to take me and put me into that harvest. That's a very different concept than just saying well Lord there's a lot of lost people out there and I sure hope somebody witnesses to him please send somebody away. This is a very personal prayer that Jesus is exhorting the potential harvesters to pray. I see what you see. I feel what you feel.

I believe what you know. I see what you've done and Lord I want you to take me and put me into that harvest. And even if it costs me my life I still want you to thrust me out. And you know what I think if we really prayed that way do you think God would answer our prayer? I mean if that really were the deep heart cry of your heart do you think God would put you in that harvest?

What do you think? And I think he would do for you what he did for those men in the next chapter and he would send you out and he would invest your life in that harvest. So my challenge to you and my challenge to myself is are we really praying that way? Loving God involves loving what he loves to the point that we are willing to invest ourselves in the cause that moved him in this way. So may the Lord help us. Lord we take a moment to thank you for a text like this that comes right into where we live and goes past all of the things that we're involved in that have religious and spiritual overtones to the very core of who we are as a person and what we really desire in the depths of our heart.

And what we talk to you about when we talk freely and openly about what we really want in our life. So Lord we come to a text like this and we ask that you would help us to pray like this. That this Lord would really be in our core and in our heart that deep desire that we have to be invested in this harvest that you feel so deeply about and that you are preparing to be reaped. Lord we want to be involved. We ask that you would thrust us into it. In Jesus name. Amen. You've been listening to a message preached at Bob Jones University by Dr. Sam Horn which was part of the series Loving God. Join us again tomorrow as we continue this series on The Daily Platform.