Laborers In The Harvest – Part 1
Luke 10:1-20 (1-2)
January 13, 2019
Well this morning we begin a new section in Luke’s gospel.
You’re aware of the themes we’ve seen.
1) Jesus, the Long-Awaited Redeemer of Israel
Luke 1:1 – 3:38
2) The Gospel Ministry of Jesus
Luke 4:1 – 7:17
3) Who is this Man?
Luke 7:18 – 9:20
4) Messianic Misconceptions
Luke 9:21-62
Well this morning we introduce a 5th theme,
“THE NECESSITY OF JESUS”
It is very simply that reminder that submission Christ is not optional.
We all understand that eternity depends upon our relationship with Christ.
We often read:
John 14:6 “Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
Acts 4:12 “And there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved.”
1 Timothy 2:5 “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,”
Verses like that cannot be overemphasized.
That truth is one that all of humanity must embrace.
Humanity has fallen short of the glory of God
And abides under God’s holy wrath,
And the only means of reconciliation with God
Is through the atonement offered in Jesus Christ.
That makes Jesus the pinnacle of importance.
No decision you make in life will ever even come close
To the importance of that decision.
I saw a post on Facebook recently that said:
“There is a 0.0296% chance that your child will become a professional athlete. There is a 100% chance that they will stand before God.”
There is nothing that you will ever encounter or deal with
That even comes close to the importance of Christ in your life.
To call Him necessary is actually even a bit of an understatement.
But that’s what Luke is putting on display here in chapter 10.
This section would serve to remind us that
His call to deny self and take up the cross and follow Him
Is NOT an optional one.
Our world must seek and love and submit to Christ.
LUKE 10 WILL MAKE THAT POINT.
I can go ahead and give you a quick rundown to help you see that.
It begins in the first 20 verses with the sending of the 70 and their return to Him.
• And everything they are called to preach only further emphasizes the necessity
of Christ.
• Since those who receive Christ enter God’s kingdom and those who do not fall
under judgment worse than that of Sodom and Gomorrah.
• But even upon their return and their excitement at having seen the demons
subject to them Jesus says:
Luke 10:20 “Nevertheless do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.”
It is a reminder that a relationship with Jesus
Is even more important than authority in this world.
Victory is nice, victory over demons is especially rewarding,
But even that pales in comparison to being saved by Christ.
And then comes the heartbeat of the entire chapter.
Luke 10:21-22 “At that very time He rejoiced greatly in the Holy Spirit, and said, “I praise You, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants. Yes, Father, for this way was well-pleasing in Your sight. “All things have been handed over to Me by My Father, and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.”
That is the heart. That is the point of the section.
Namely that no one knows the Father
Except those whom the Son wills to reveal Him.
YOU MUST HAVE JESUS.
• This even leads into Jesus reminding the 12 of how blessed they are that they
have been granted the right to know Christ.
From there we go to the story of the Good Samaritan which most people think is a story about being neighborly.
• No. Luke uses the story as negative illustration.
• We have here a man who is rejecting Christ but trying to justify himself through his own love of God and love of his neighbor.
• The story Jesus gives is meant to reveal the great lengths that are entailed in loving your neighbor properly.
• No one should read that story and then be able to say, “Yep, I do that.” That story is meant to condemn our lack of brotherly love and once again drive us to Jesus.
And then the chapter concludes with Jesus expressing that very reality as He dines with Martha and Mary.
• Martha is upset that Mary isn’t helping in the kitchen and Jesus says:
Luke 10:41-42 “But the Lord answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and bothered about so many things; but only one thing is necessary, for Mary has chosen the good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
That’s why we call this chapter “The Necessity of Jesus”
He is in fact the one thing that is necessary in this life.
So there’s the theme we’re going to be embarking upon
For the next few weeks.
AND IT BEGINS WITH JESUS SENDING OUT THE 70.
I, once again, find the Lord’s timing to be impeccable,
• Since not only are we currently in the middle of our “Mission’s Month”
• But we are also having our first meeting this afternoon for “Mission Malawi”
• I can promise you that when we started studying Luke in July of 2017 I had no
idea that we’d be here at this time.
God always has a way of directing His people.
So let’s begin this study of the necessity of Christ,
Even as we currently focus on our mission as believers
To go and proclaim the gospel.
We can divide this text into 5 points, but it will take a few weeks to get through them all
#1 THE SOVEREIGN APPOINTMENT
Luke 10:1
“Now after this” is more than just an insignificant transition.
What Luke is really indicating is after Jesus’ Galilean ministry.
We talked about this some a few months ago;
Namely that Jesus ministry in Galilee was rapidly coming to an end.
Now it is over.
• Jesus is moving now to Jerusalem.
• As you know, He has tunnel vision, He is headed to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed and to be raised from the dead.
• In order to do that, He must leave the northern region of Galilee, He must travel south through Samaria, into Judea and ultimately down to Jerusalem.
His Galilean ministry has come to a close.
You will even see down in verses 13-15
• That Jesus will now pronounce final judgment on those Galilean cities which
saw all His miracles and heard all His preaching and yet still refused to repent.
(13-15) “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. “But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you. “And you, Capernaum, will not be exalted to heaven, will you? You will be brought down to Hades!
That is not a warning of what could happen,
That is a declaration of what will happen.
They rejected Him and now He is leaving,
He is heading south to Judea and Jerusalem.
Certainly He is on a mission to go and offer Himself a sacrifice for sin,
But He is also on a mission to PREACH THE GOSPEL ON THE WAY.
But before He arrives in any city,
He has ordained to send messengers on ahead of Him.
“Now after this the Lord appointed seventy others, and sent them in pairs ahead of Him to every city and place where He Himself was going to come.”
This is NOT THE FIRST TIME you’ve seen such an action.
We remember the man named John the Baptist who said:
John 3:28 “You yourselves are my witnesses that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but, ‘I have been sent ahead of Him.’”
Of him we read:
John 1:6-8 “There came a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to testify about the Light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he came to testify about the Light.”
I’ve always liked that passage
Because of the peculiar reality that it seems to reveal.
Because in that passage we have “Light”
And we also have one who came “to testify about the Light”
It actually seems a little redundant.
Light is self-evident. If light enters your darkness
You don’t need anyone to tell you, it is unmistakable.
And yet, we find that God sends one to testify about the light.
The reason of course is because it is so important.
We don’t want anyone to miss it.
That was John’s purpose.
• To make sure that no one missed the Light when He came through.
• He was to prepare the hearts of the people for the coming King.
Well here we have “seventy” John the Baptists
Going out in “pairs ahead of Him”.
They are doing the same thing John did.
They are making sure that everyone is ready for Jesus when He arrives.
These are not the 12 apostles,
• These are 70 others who have no doubt been following Jesus and listening to
Him preach and watching His miracles.
• We know that when our Lord ascended there were 120 in the upper room.
• Certainly these 70 were part of that group.
Here the Lord appointed them to go ahead of Him
And prepare each place for His coming.
This would have been southern Galilee
This would have been Samaria
This would have been Judea
You go and tell the people that the King is on His way.
These were SOVEREIGNLY APPOINTED MISSIONARIES
For those of you mulling over the idea of going to Malawi this summer,
• We’re going to talk about this in more detail in our meeting this afternoon.
• Namely how to recognize when the Lord is doing this.
But namely here, you simply must see that missions at its core
Is about submission to the will of the King.
He calls, He appoints, we obey.
Well the Lord is sending the 70 here.
It is a Sovereign Appointment
#2 THE SPIRITUAL ASSESSMENT
Luke 10:2a
Here we find WHY their sending is so important.
“And He was saying to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few;”
This is a reality that the Lord wanted them to be aware of.
And it is a reality, that rightly understood,
Should operate as a chief motivator for mission involvement.
THE REALITY IS THIS,
Namely that “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”
But let’s make sure we understand what the Lord is saying here.
The GENERAL ASSUMPTION I think to this statement is
• That Jesus is saying that there are lots of people out there who are ready to be
saved
• They are just waiting on someone to go out there and share the gospel with
them and in effect harvest them into the kingdom.
I think we take that interpretation largely from the way Jesus used it
When talking to the woman at the well.
John 4:27-38 “At this point His disciples came, and they were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why do You speak with her?” So the woman left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” They went out of the city, and were coming to Him. Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work. “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest. “Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal; so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. “For in this case the saying is true, ‘ One sows and another reaps.’ “I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”
That is a fairly straightforward analogy and a strong rebuke of the disciple’s lack of focus and priority.
• As they seen the people of the town they had just left all coming out to meet
Jesus, and Jesus says they are like a great harvest coming into the kingdom.
• Jesus says, “I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored”
• They thought they had been sent to buy lunch, Jesus said, “That’s not what I
sent you to do. That whole town was ready for salvation, but you didn’t say
anything to anyone about Me.”
And certainly from that story we could easily make an assumption
That Jesus means the same thing here.
There’s a whole group of people ready to be saved,
They’re just waiting for you to go and reap the harvest.
But that’s NOT ALL that Jesus means,
And that’s not exactly what He means here.
In our text, Jesus doesn’t refer to the 70 as REAPERS,
He refers to them as “laborers”, and THERE IS A DIFFERENCE.
The “laborers” worked the field and worked the vineyards
TO PREPARE IT FOR THE HARVEST.
At what you need to understand here is what the “harvest” represents.
The “harvest” represents THE COMING JUDGMENT.
We certainly see that in the Old Testament.
Joel 3:11-14 “Hasten and come, all you surrounding nations, And gather yourselves there. Bring down, O LORD, Your mighty ones. Let the nations be aroused And come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat, For there I will sit to judge All the surrounding nations. Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, tread, for the wine press is full; The vats overflow, for their wickedness is great. Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.”
And most of the time this is how Jesus referenced it.
Remember the parable of the wheat and the tares?
Matthew 13:30 “Allow both to grow together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, “First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up; but gather the wheat into my barn.”‘”
Matthew 13:40-42 “So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. “The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
THE POINT IS THAT
The harvest represented more than just the salvation of elect.
It also represented the destruction of the wicked.
The harvest is the final culmination.
The harvest is that day when the redeemed are delivered
And the day when the wicked are destroyed.
Revelation 14:14-20 “Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud was one like a son of man, having a golden crown on His head and a sharp sickle in His hand. And another angel came out of the temple, crying out with a loud voice to Him who sat on the cloud, “Put in your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, because the harvest of the earth is ripe.” Then He who sat on the cloud swung His sickle over the earth, and the earth was reaped. And another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, and he also had a sharp sickle. Then another angel, the one who has power over fire, came out from the altar; and he called with a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, “Put in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters from the vine of the earth, because her grapes are ripe.” So the angel swung his sickle to the earth and gathered the clusters from the vine of the earth, and threw them into the great wine press of the wrath of God. And the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood came out from the wine press, up to the horses’ bridles, for a distance of two hundred miles.”
There you see it again.
• There is coming a day of absolute finality when this entire world will give an account to God.
• Those are the redeemed will be delivered and the wicked will be destroyed.
• And it is often portrayed with the analogy of the harvest.
We also see it from Jesus with the analogy of a dragnet.
Matthew 13:47-50 “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet cast into the sea, and gathering fish of every kind; and when it was filled, they drew it up on the beach; and they sat down and gathered the good fish into containers, but the bad they threw away. “So it will be at the end of the age; the angels will come forth and take out the wicked from among the righteous, and will throw them into the furnace of fire; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Different analogy, but the same point.
And I give you that to help you understand what Jesus has in view here.
He is referring to a “harvest” that is certainly coming.
In fact He says, “The harvest is plentiful”
It is the Greek word POLYS (Polus)
It means “great” or “much” or “large”
We know it as a harvest which will encompass the entire world.
JESUS SAYS THAT IT IS WHAT IS COMING.
And certainly you should understand this.
THIS WORLD IS HEADED FOR JUDGMENT.
Peter said:
2 Peter 3:7 “But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.”
And again:
2 Peter 3:10 “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up.”
There is a coming judgment
In which the righteous will be gathered to the Lord
And the wicked will be destroyed.
The ONLY MEANS TO BE SAVED from this judgment
Is through the Lord Jesus.
John 5:24-29 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but has passed out of death into life. “Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.”
SO, IF judgment is coming,
AND the only way to escape it is through Christ
THEN you understand what Jesus is expecting from these “laborers”
They aren’t going in necessarily to reap,
They are going in to proclaim the truth
So that these people will run to Christ.
And if you look at another account when Jesus used this same phrase
Then you’ll understand WHY IT WAS HIS DESIRE that they do that.
Matthew 9:35-38 “Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. “Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
• Why does Matthew say that Jesus gave commands regarding
laborers before the harvest?
“He felt compassion for them”
• Do you understand that Jesus knew better than anyone about the certainty of judgment and the agonies of hell?
• Do you understand that this was a driving reality in the life of Jesus?
• Do you understand His desire to rescue sinners from hell?
• Do you understand His compassion?
What else can be said but that a lack of missions
Is nothing short than a lack of compassion?
It was the compassion of Jesus that drove Him to beg for more laborers.
We have before us a world that is lost in sin and headed for judgment,
And those who by in large don’t know it.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 “And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.”
We have here Satan who is a liar
• And he has convinced the world that they are fine and that there is no need
for concern.
• He has raised up hordes of false prophets to proclaim to them a false gospel
to keep them focused on their comforts and the things of this world.
• They push people through the wide gate and onto the narrow way which
leads only to destruction.
AND THIS WORLD IS BUYING IT.
They need laborers who will do the work
Of preparing the field for the coming harvest.
Hoe up the weeds… Prune back the vines… Bring in the water…
THAT IS WHY THE LORD IS SENDING THESE 70.
THAT IS WHY HE SENDS YOU.
• You aren’t called to save anyone,
• But you are called to go to work in the field,
• Because there is a day of judgment coming to that field.
If nothing else, general compassion should kick in
And cause you to go to work.
So Jesus has sovereignly appointed these 70
And explained to them why the mission is so important.
Let’s begin looking at the next point.
#3 THE SPECIFIC ASSIGNMENT
Luke 10:2b-12
This morning let’s just look at the rest of verse 2.
• Because the judgment is coming.
• Because the wicked will be destroyed.
• Because this judgment is great and will cover the whole world.
Jesus recognizes a need for something.
What is it?
MORE WORKERS
Do you understand that?
• That we live in a world that is in desperate need of missionaries.
• We live in a world that is in desperate need of preachers.
• We live in a world that is in desperate need of teachers of the truth.
And I might just go ahead and add that it is SUPPOSED TO BE YOU.
Can I remind you of what the writer of Hebrews said to his congregation?
Hebrews 5:11-14 “Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”
I understand the reality of spiritual gifts and vocational callings
BUT DO NOT MISUNDERSTAND THAT TO MEAN THAT
God is just ok with everyone else sitting back and doing nothing.
You are expected to be mature enough in your spiritual growth that you can articulate that truth to someone else.
• The writer of Hebrews was frustrated that more of his people could not.
• They were teenagers still eating baby food.
• They needed to grow up and accept responsibility and do the work.
Our world doesn’t need lazy and immature believers.
Our world needs laborers who will enter the field
And do the work of teaching the truth about judgment and salvation.
Jesus could see that, and we still see it.
LET ME SHOW YOU HIS SOLUTION
He says, “therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
He DOESN’T start with “pray for the lost”
He starts with “pray for the workers to get up off their rears and do the work”
It is the simple reality that we have been reminded of time after time.
Romans 10:13-14 “for “WHOEVER WILL CALL ON THE NAME OF THE LORD WILL BE SAVED.” How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?”
The simple truth is that the lost won’t be saved
If no one presents to them the gospel.
And Jesus said the first thing you need to do is pray that “the Lord of the harvest [would] send out laborers into His harvest.”
Well Church, there’s our first directive for missions month.
• To pray that God would send missionaries into the world.
• To pray that God would raise up preachers and teachers of the gospel
There’s our first directive for things like Mission Malawi
• We’ve had here before our church for the past 2 months a Macedonian Call.
• We’ve had a fellow believer contacting us, begging us for help in his fields.
You know what he is begging for?
TEACHERS
People who can give foundational doctrinal truth to his people
So they can go labor in their fields.
Have you prayed that God would send people to that mission?
Have you asked God to raise up people from our own congregation who would answer that call?
And I know that’s hard because
In order to offer such a request you have to be willing to answer it.
Certainly Jesus is aware of that reality.
But His first assignment to the 70
And to the rest of the disciples and even to us
Is that in light of the harvest that we should “beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.”
“beseech”
DEOMAI in the Greek.
It means to beg.
It is the word the leper used when he wanted to be cleansed from his leprosy.
Luke 5:12 “While He was in one of the cities, behold, there was a man covered with leprosy; and when he saw Jesus, he fell on his face and implored Him, saying, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.”
It is the word the demon used when he wanted to escape the immediate judgment of Christ.
Luke 8:28 “Seeing Jesus, he cried out and fell before Him, and said in a loud voice, ” What business do we have with each other, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg You, do not torment me.”
It is the word the father used when asking Jesus to heal his son from the demon who afflicted him.
Luke 9:38 “And a man from the crowd shouted, saying, “Teacher, I beg You to look at my son, for he is my only boy,”
Does that paint you a better picture of the command here?
We are talking about a world that is facing a sure and certain harvest.
• We are talking about a coming day when the Lord will return and will gather the wheat into His barn but will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
The only salvation from this judgment is through Jesus Christ.
• Trusting Him is absolutely necessary for the world.
The whole world is facing this judgment, and the mission is highly understaffed.
• We need more workers.
• We need more people to enter the field and do the work of revealing that judgment is coming.
• We need more people to enter the field and do the work of calling the wicked to repentance.
• We need more people to enter the field and do the work of proclaiming the gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ.
It all points to the necessity of Jesus.
Certainly we believe that.
Well, in that belief, the first thing the Lord tells us to do
Is to beg God to send those workers.
THIS IS WHERE OUR LORD BEGAN.
This is where we start our Missions month.
This is how we begin our Malawi mission.
• There will come a time when we pray for the lost.
• There will come a time when we pray for current missionaries.
• BUT FIRST we pray that God will raise up more missionaries who will go
and do the work.
THE HARVEST DEMANDS MORE LABORERS.
So there’s the beginning.
If you have not done it yet, I’m asking you this morning to start praying that God would send out workers.
Not just to Malawi, but ultimately to every home in Spur
and to every corner of the globe.
This is the command.
START BY PRAYING FOR OBEDIENT WORKERS.
