Father God, we thank you that you sent your Son, Jesus, to this earth. We thank you for all He taught and all He did while He was here. We thank you that He died for our sins and rose again, and that He sends His Spirit now to be our Teacher. And we pray that through His Spirit we may understand His words and actions. We ask it in His name. Amen.
I don’t know how well you respond to crowds. Here in Cambridge on a Saturday, particularly as Christmas draws near, the pavements and the streets become heavily congested. And every Saturday I say to myself, I am not going to leave the Vicarage. I’m going to stay there. And every Saturday (although its my day off) I always have to go out and do something. Yesterday it was to buy a Vileda mop-head. I had to walk out to Woolworths and I thought I wish I hadn’t done this, as I forced my way through the hugely congested crowds.
Perhaps you were there with several thousand on Friday night, watching the Midsummer Common bonfire. Perhaps you got lost from those you came with (as I always do when I go to that event). So, I don’t know what you make of vast throngs of people when you find yourself in the midst of them. I have to confess I am always tempted by the cynicism of the person who wrote:
I wish I loved the human race,
I wish I loved its silly face.
I wish I loved the way it walks,
I wish I loved the way it talks.
And when I’m introduced to one,
I wish I said, "What jolly fun!"
Or perhaps, G. K. Chesterton‘s equally arrogant (although probably theologically more helpful) remark: "God must love the common man, or else He would not have made so many of him."
There is a huge mass of people out there and, for the Christian, the prospect of that vast population of human beings is always coloured by the thought: how many of them are Christians? Christians are very conscious of being only a small minority of the total population. And it can be distressing to the Christian faith to contemplate the huge masses of unbelieving mankind – the sheer weight of their numbers, the very dimensions of human need. It can panic us. It can certainly cause doubt in us.
But at the end of Matthew chapter 9, we see Jesus responding to the crowds. And for Him they were clearly an opportunity and not a discouragement. G. K. Chesterton was clearly right. Verse 35, our first verse, presents us with Jesus as a man with a mission. Then in the next verse we see His motive for that mission. In verses 37 and 38 we see the theology of mission. And in the early verses of chapter 10 His strategy for mission. Those are the four headings that I have set out on page three of the Order of Service.
1) A Man with a Mission (vv. 35-39)
‘Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness’ (v. 35). That verse is a bit of a summary, and if you were to read the whole of Matthew’s Gospel up to this point at one sweep, you would gain an overwhelming impression of energetic activity. Jesus had been teaching, and His teaching, like the Sermon on the Mount, was such as had never been heard on earth before. He preached, proclaiming that in His person the Kingdom of God had come near. And He healed every disease and every sickness. There was no illness or disease that He could not heal. No man had ever spoken like this or acted like this, before or since. That was the clear verdict of His contemporaries. You see back at the end of verse 33 (in the passage we looked at last week): "Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel," the crowd said in amazement at Him. And it has to be our verdict too, the more closely we look at Jesus. The world has never seen His like.
And there was an awesome purposefulness about Jesus’ mission too. You will detect this as we work our way through the gospel. It was clear that He was heading somewhere; He had a goal, a date with destiny, a rendezvous with death. He was a Man with a Mission, and while that mission was not yet clear to His disciples at the time, it is clear to us now, as we look back, and we realise that He’s heading to Jerusalem, to die for the sins of the world.
But what they could see at the time, was the motive for this mission. That’s our second point, and it’s there in verse 36.
2) The Motive for Mission (v. 36).
‘When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’
We are not often told about Jesus’ feelings in the gospels. So it is significant that we read here that the sight of the crowds moved Him to compassion (a very strong word: used in the gospels only of Jesus or by Jesus). He was moved to compassion because they were ‘harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.’ That little phrase ‘sheep without a shepherd’ is an image from the Old Testament. It is very frequently used there of God’s people without spiritual leadership. So it wasn’t their political need that gave rise to Jesus’ compassion. Remember they were a conquered, subject race under Roman rule, who knew no democratic liberties. But it wasn’t their political need that moved Jesus to compassion. It was not their physical need (although we have already seen how Jesus was active to relieve their physical suffering). It was their spiritual need. Again the language is strong: ‘harassed’ literally means flayed, mangled, with the skin ripped off. And ‘helpless’ means literally thrown down, prostrate. It conjures up the picture of a flock of sheep worried to death by dogs. Have you ever seen a photograph of that very tragic occurrence? It’s horrible: you see the bodies of sheep strewn all over a field, mangled, torn open, flung around. And as Jesus looked on men and women, that is what He saw. It was not that they were on crutches and bandaged and looking short of food. He saw souls like sheep in their vulnerability and helplessness. He saw to the heart of all human need – beyond sickness, beyond hunger, beyond injustice, beyond exploitation, beyond misery – to helpless, harassed souls.
I wonder if that’s an awareness that you and I ever have as we look on crowds. Do we see people without spiritual direction? With no knowledge of God? Leading fruitless and futile lives because actually they are nothing more than the lives of superior animals? Oh yes, with speech and conceptual thought and great technical ability, but no significance whatsoever beyond death?
If we would understand the mission of Jesus, then we must feel the compassion of Jesus, and that means looking with the eyes of Jesus.
Sometimes when I do have to walk through Cambridge on a Saturday morning, and I’m in slightly better spiritual form than at other times, I try to look at the faces of the crowd coming towards me along the pavement, and pray for each one: Lord, touch that life at its point of deepest need.
So now let’s consider what Jesus does in the face of these shepherdless sheep, this unbelieving world full of confused and futile lives. He’s not depressed, as I can be, by the size of the task. He sees it not as a burden but as an opportunity. You’ll notice He calls it a harvest (verses 37 & 38). And here we’re going to grasp, I hope, the theology for mission, according to Jesus.
3) The Theology of Mission (vv. 37, 38)
‘Then he [Jesus] said to his disciples, "The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.’ It’s a harvest – but it’s a harvest for reaping and not for judgement. And there is a Lord of the harvest. Do you notice that little link between verses 36 and 37?– the need for the work of harvesting is created by compassion in the heart of God. In verse 36, Jesus sees the crowds and has compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then, He said to His disciples, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers.
It’s not our own compassion that motivates us. The worker in the harvest field is not actually spurred on in his reaping by tender feelings towards the grain. He or she works out of obedience to the Lord of the harvest. We are servants sent out to reap at the command of Another. It’s His harvest, not ours. And we may need to be reminded, therefore, of the sovereignty of God in this matter. Because if we take the focus away from God’s compassion for all humanity, to our Christian compassion for unbelieving humanity, there are two pitfalls that will open before us.
(a) One is that we will start to patronise the non-Christian. There will be non-Christians here today, and I suspect they will know the experience of being patronised by Christians. The poor, benighted pagans - but that is what we are, if only God had left us to our own devices. And so there is no place for superiority – it was God’s grace that stepped in and saved us.
(b) But also their is no place for the second pitfall, which is despair. If our evangelism (our telling other people about Jesus) is rooted only in our own concern for other people, we will not manage to keep going when there are disappointments and failures. Our evangelism must be obedience-orientated and not success-orientated. We do it because we are sent by the Lord of the harvest, who has compassion on the helpless crowds. And the first thing we do is not to run, but to pray: "Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field" (v. 38). It is His harvest field, and we must hang on to these two things: His mercy, the compassion in His heart which confronted each one of us at our conversion (if we’re Christians), and which reaches out to the crowd; and, secondly, our obedience to His will as we ask Him to send out His own labourers into His own harvest field, for He is its Lord.
4) The Strategy for Mission (10:1)
As you will detect from the clock, we’re going to spend a little longer on this. Usually when preachers get to their fourth point they say, "We’re going to deal with this one very quickly." I may as well level with you, we are going to deal with this at slightly greater length than the other ones!
‘He called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.’ Faced with a teeming world, Jesus sent twelve! It is interesting to ponder the ways Jesus did not work. He never wrote a book – others wrote on His behalf, but He never wrote a book Himself (we only know that He could write from one teeny incident in the gospels). He did not start a political movement. In fact He spent much of His ministry trying to stop people using Him politically – He had to step away from that possibility. Certainly He never raised an army. If you’re familiar with the rise of Islam, you’ll know how Muhammad worked: his quite outstanding political achievements in uniting the Arab peoples, in conquering the Arabian Peninsula, in beginning the conquest of almost the entire Mediterranean world – extraordinary achievements within his own lifetime – and the meteoric rise of Islam in consequence.
These twelve men (and one of them a traitor) are the modest legacy of Jesus Christ. They were His response to the plentiful harvest. A handful of men to reach a world. It is true, as chapter 10 will make clear, that these twelve are not us. You will notice from verse 1 that they are a direct extension of Jesus Himself, invested with His authority: ‘... and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.’ As we go on through the chapter you will discover that they had His specific mission (which is also not true of us): in verses 5-15. He tells them to go just to the lost sheep of the tribes of Israel.
Matthew gives us the names of these twelve, but he’s not very interested in the individuals as such, six of them never get mentioned anywhere else in the gospel.
He’s interested, though, in their commission; for the instructions Jesus gave, while they begin with the twelve and their unique and immediate expedition into Galilee widen as the chapter goes on until a far more extensive ministry is in view, reaching to the furthest corners of the earth and to the very end of time. What began in Galilee is not yet finished. It’s going on in Cambridge today. It’s God’s enterprise, but we are invited to share in it, to play our part. Jesus’ strategy to change the world requires our active involvement. It may not be the strategy that you and I would have chosen. We would, perhaps, have liked something far more spectacular and sensational, something that reached millions at a stroke, preferably. Human evangelism is always desperately seeking size: big crusades, big numbers, big responses. We love to count the numbers, don’t we?– so that we can be encouraged and push on.
But this is God’s harvest and this is His way of reaping it that we’re looking at this morning. It’s a modest way, an unspectacular way, it’s the way that involves you and me doing what we can easily do: talking to other people about Jesus. It is well within our capabilities.
Faced with some formidable undertaking, you and I tend to count our money and weigh up the problems. Jesus asked a few people to join Him in the task. Has it worked? I think it must have done, mustn’t it? Look around the building at the moment. What are we doing here? Why have we got 3-400 people in the building now if this hasn’t worked? One person has told another about Jesus down the centuries and it’s led to you and me gathered here now.
Do you know why we don’t see many angels these days? Angels were around in the Old Testament, as you’ll know if you are familiar with it. And they were very active at Jesus’ birth (as we always remember at Christmas time). But it was not the angels’ job to announce the good news about Jesus. If you get a moment, look at chapter 10 of the Acts of the Apostles. You will notice that there is a gentile (a non-Jew) known as Cornelius who is confronted by an angel – God took the trouble to send an angel to this man. But the angel did not tell Cornelius the good news about Jesus! He told him to send to Joppa (which was a long way away) to fetch a man named Peter to come all the way back again to tell him about Jesus. It was not the angel’s job: it’s your and my job. God’s not sending angels to Cambridge today. He’s sending the people in this building who already know Him.
This is God’s strategy. In the gospel Jesus is going to focus a disproportionate amount of His time on these twelve men. Wouldn’t He have done better to act like the prophet Muhammad? Wouldn’t He have done better to have pursued political power and military might? But that is not God’s way. And every time the Christian faith has gone down the same path as Islam in its approach to evangelism, it has perverted itself.
If you want to see what power-evangelism is, according to Jesus Christ, stay with us as we study the rest of Matthew chapter 10. Next week we are going to take a break from it because it is a special Overseas Mission Sunday. But for the next few weeks after that we are going to be looking at the rest of the chapter. It’s going to tell us God’s strategy, the way of the Cross, modest, unspectacular and involving you and me. Because you see, God has brought you and me, if we are Christians today, out of darkness into His marvellous light, so that we can declare His great works to those who do not yet know Him. In saving us He has given us everything we need for this simple task.
There was a conversation once between a camel and his son. "Dad," said the son, "Why do we have such big feet?" "Well, son," said the dad, "in the desert those feet stop us sinking into the soft sand. They are very necessary." "Dad," asked the young camel, "why do we have such thick fur?" "Well, son, in the desert it can get surprisingly cold at night, and we need that thick fur to keep us warm." "Dad, why do we have such big humps?" "Well, son, in the desert there is very little rain. Those humps store water to keep us alive." "Dad." "Yes, son?" "Why are we in London Zoo?"
As a Bible teacher it is my responsibility to be seeking, week by week, to open the Bible up and to share with you the enormously rich resources that you and I have in Christ. But those resources are not for living in a zoo, but for mission to the world. And I am sometimes tempted to wonder why we are so inclined to sit here in a cage with the world peering in at us through that door (like camels in a zoo). For what are we waiting? We have all we need if we know Jesus, and His grace has met us and restored us to a relationship with our loving heavenly Father, the Creator Almighty God. If we know Him through Jesus we have everything we need to just share that with others.
There will be a perfect opportunity this Wednesday night. It was mentioned to us in the notices. Forgive me for saying this if it is inappropriate for you, but I wonder for how many of us a little mental thing came down, Oh, I wouldn’t think of bringing anybody to that. And I wonder if that was right. Perhaps you’re involved in a Christian Union at one of the universities or colleges here, laying on many evangelistic opportunities. At that mention of an Advent Guest Service, that carol service in the Union Debating Chamber with Michael Green on November 21st at 5.00pm, did you switch off? Last week we shared a list of things we are planning here in the church. We invited you to think of anything else we could do that would be a natural way you could bring a friend. Some are available from the Information Desk this week. Can I just say a word to those of you who know and love Jesus, but when you hear of those things the veil drops: It’s not for me. That attitude will bring the Church to an end in one generation. It isn’t Billy Graham who keeps it going, it isn’t me who keeps it going. I can bring maybe one friend to an evangelistic meeting, but no more than that.
It is the Twelve, the little handful whom Jesus called. We are a much bigger handful than that. Among us this morning are many who Jesus has called and given everything to, all the riches of God in Christ are yours and mine today.
Well, perhaps it’s too much to think of bringing somebody to something, but we could be praying, couldn’t we?– for someone, that we might get into conversation with them about Jesus Christ.
Maybe, if you’re a student, you might be thinking of just one particular person you would want to be praying for. Perhaps hoping that by the end of next term you might bring them to some event.
We’ve been looking this morning at this Man with a Mission (the mission that has created this gathering, 2,000 years later), who invites you and me to join Him in it, to share His Motive, which is the compassion in His heart for the people and students of Cambridge. And then He invites us to understand The Theology for Mission, that it is His, He is the Lord, He’s going to do it. We’re just invited to share in that and accept The Strategy, that it is you and me, ordinary men and women following in the footsteps of these twelve disciples.
Let’s pray:
Father God, we do again thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ, for what He came to do on this earth and for the way He has dealt with our sin. And we pray that His compassion might spill over into our hearts. And we pray that this mission of His, to reach and touch harassed and helpless sheep might be something that we can play our part in.
Give us courage, Lord. Teach us and lead us. For Jesus’ sake we pray. Amen.