Lord of the Harvest
Matthew 9:35-38
This morning’s passage in Matthew 9 serves as a summary and transition. It concludes the miracle stories that demonstrate Jesus’ authority in Matthew 8 and 9, and it prepares for the sending out of the apostles in Matthew 10.
Remember that after Jesus preached the Sermon on The Mount in Galilee, He went down from the mountain into the region around the city of Capernaum, and performed many astonishing miracles there. He cleansed the leper and healed sick people. He gave sight to the blind and voice to the mute. He raised the dead. He commanded the waves and the wind. And He cast out demons. In all of it, He was proving that He was the Son of God in human flesh; and that, in Him, the Kingdom of God had come in fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures.
In between sets of miracles in these chapters, Matthew presented dialogues that Jesus had with various people about discipleship. The first dialogue was with two would-be disciples and focused on the cost of discipleship. The second dialogue was with the Pharisees and focused on who Jesus calls as disciples, that Jesus calls sinners, not those who think they are righteous. The third dialogue was with some of John the Baptist’s disciples and focused on leaving the old behind, that everything changed when Jesus came.[1]
After all the teaching Jesus had done and all the miracles He performed, in Matthew 9:34, the Pharisees didn’t know what to do with Jesus. They couldn’t deny His miracles. So, they chose instead to say, “He casts out demons by the ruler of the demons.” A blasphemous accusation. But Jesus gave the perfect response. He answers His critics by going about all of the cities and villages of Galilee teaching, preaching, and performing even more miracles.
We are going to look at this short passage in three sections. Jesus’ ministry, His compassion, and His call. Because this section serves as a transition from Jesus’ ministry to the ministry of His disciples, it calls us to consider how we will apply what we learn. Jesus ministered to people. What is your ministry? Jesus demonstrated deep compassion. What compassion do you show? Jesus calls disciples to respond to the need. How are you responding?
1. Jesus’ Ministry (Matt. 9:35)
Matthew 9:35 says, “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.” This summary statement is almost identical to Matthew 4:23. These two summaries bookend this section of Matthew and they highlight the threefold ministry of Jesus: teaching, preaching, and healing. Matthew 5-7 presented the teaching and proclamation of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 8-9 demonstrated Jesus’ healing ministry. Matthew has shown that both Jesus’ authority in teaching and His authority to do miracles could only have come from God Himself.
Matthew 4:23 said that Jesus was going about “in all Galilee,” and now Matthew 9:35 says that Jesus was going about “all the cities and villages.” “Galilee” signifies the general area covered, while “all the cities and villages” demonstrates the scope of Jesus’ ministry. The area of Galilee was about 40 miles wide and 70 miles long. Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century, tells us that there were around 200 cities and villages in that region with a total population of about 3 million people. Jesus went where people lived and worked. He didn’t just wait for people to come to Him, He went to them.
And what did Jesus do? Teaching, Proclaiming, and Healing. Notice that Jesus ministered to the whole person. He ministered to the ‘mind’ by teaching them, to the ‘will’ by preaching to them, and to the ‘body’ by healing them.
First, He taught them. We’re told that He was “teaching in their synagogues“. “Teaching” means providing systematic instruction. He taught them in “their synagogues“, which was the place in which the teaching from the scriptures occurred. The Jews came to the synagogue to hear the scripture read and have it explained to them. As a visiting Rabbi, Jesus would probably be invited to teach the scriptures. We see an example of this in Luke 4 when Jesus returned to Nazareth, entered the Synagogue on the Sabbath, stood and read from the prophet Isaiah, then sat down to explain what He read and how it was fulfilled in Him.
What kind of things did Jesus teach? My suspicion is that He taught many of the very same things that He taught in the Sermon on The Mount. There, Jesus explained the scriptures in light of the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. By teaching the scripture, Jesus was able to show the people the true spiritual nature of the Kingdom of Heaven and its fulfillment in Him.
The second part of Jesus’ ministry was preaching the gospel of the kingdom. “Preaching” means proclaiming in the manner of a herald. The word “gospel” (euangelion; from which we get the word “evangel”) means “good news”. And so, Jesus – the King – was preaching the good news of the kingdom. He was telling people that His kingdom has come; and that He was offering it to all who would receive it; and that it was all wrapped up in Him as the promised King! All of this emphasizes the greatness of the theme of Jesus’ preaching. He went out to proclaim it to those who needed to hear this good news; and urged them to respond to it.[2]
Thirdly, Jesus’ ministry involved healing. He was “healing every sickness and every disease among the people”. In other words, He ministered to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of people. We have already seen examples of this in the nine specific miracles recorded in Matthew 8-9. Jesus’ healing ministry was a visible sign that the words Jesus was teaching were truth and the kingdom Jesus was preaching had come.
As we’ve seen, the response to Jesus’ ministry was mixed. Some, like Matthew, believed and followed. Most were amazed at all He did and said, but it made no lasting difference in their lives. And, like the Pharisees, rejected Him openly and spoke against Him. But the responses did not deter Jesus from fulfilling the ministry that God had for Him on earth. He taught in the synagogues, proclaimed the gospel of the kingdom, and healed every kind of disease and sickness throughout all of Galilee. There would be no excuse for these people not to know that the Messiah had come, for He was in their midst.
2. Jesus’ Compassion (Matt. 9:36)
Matthew 9:35 tells us about Jesus’ ministry and Matthew 9:36 tells us about His motivation. “36 But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.” The feelings that arose in Jesus as He saw the people were strong. The word translated here “moved with compassion” is the strongest word available to describe His feeling. The word is actually a reference to His stomach, bowels, and kidneys. We might say it hit Him in the pit of His stomach. It was a “gut-level” compassion.[3] The only times this word is used in the New Testament is with reference to Jesus—either to describe His own attitude toward the needs of people or to describe compassion in one of His parables.[4] That is the way that Jesus felt for the multitudes. A feeling much stronger than just a casual feeling of feeling “sorry for them.” Jesus felt for them, and He felt it physically in the pit of His stomach. He felt so much for them that it hurt and His spirit was not at rest because of what He saw.
Why such a strong feeling? Because, as Jesus describes it, the people were in a desperate condition. Our text describes them as “weary and scattered.” The NASB has “distressed and dispirited.” The ESV says, “harassed and helpless.” It literally means “torn and thrown down.”[5] The first word (esklmenoi) means “being flayed” or “having the skin torn” as might happen to a sheep wandering among the thorns and sharp rocks or having its hide torn by a wild beast. The second word (rhiptō) means to be thrown down prone and helpless,” as would an exhausted sheep or a person who had suffered a mortal wound.
They were “like sheep having no shepherd.” They were entrapped in a system led by the Scribes and Pharisees that had abused the Mosaic Law and left them wounded and wandering. Those who were supposed to be leading them were not leading them to God, for they were instead wolves leading them away from the true and proper worship of God. These sheep had no shepherd, and so had become battered, bruised, confused, and disheartened.
When lacking God-appointed leaders, God’s people in the Old Testament often appear as sheep without a shepherd (Num 27:17; 1 Kings 22:17; 2 Chron 18:16). The shepherds of Israel, their religious and civil rulers, had long neglected the flock entrusted to them by God. Ezekiel 34 depicts God’s sheep as neglected, maimed, and scattered. Nobody seemed to care. The chapter goes on to say that the Lord Himself would seek out His sheep, to care for them and bring them back. The Lord Himself would shepherd the flock. Matthew’s Gospel proclaims that the Shepherd of Israel has come! What God was planning has come to pass in Jesus Christ.[6]
Jesus said in John 10,
7 … “Most assuredly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who ever came before Me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not hear them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief does not come except to steal, to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep.” (John 10:7-11).
Jesus had great compassion on them in their helpless state. This is why He traveled throughout their cities and villages ministering to them—teaching them the truth of the Scriptures, proclaiming to them the good news of the kingdom of God, and healing them from every sickness and disease. The kingdom of God was at hand, the Messiah was present to redeem them from their sins.
If today, it is you who feel like the multitudes in Matthew 9, “weary and scattered,” torn and thrown down by sin and false religion, then to you, Jesus says, “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matt. 11:28). Come to Jesus. He is full of compassion. He sees your wretched condition. He feels your pain. He is able to save you from sin and all its consequences because He is the Lord, the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep. He gave up His life on the cross and took it up again in His resurrection. His death atoned for sin, and His resurrection conquered death—once for all. Repent and believe in Him today. He will set you free and give you life, eternal life.
And for those of us who have been saved, what does this verse say to us? It speaks to us about how we see people and feel about their condition. What do you feel when you see people trapped in sin? What goes through your mind when you see people suffering from the immorality of our society? Is your heart full of self-righteousness and condemnation like the Pharisees? Or is it full of compassion like Jesus? Jesus was moved with compassion and if we are His, so should we. Jesus did not see helpless sinners as the enemy and neither should we. We should see them as helpless sheep who need the Good Shepherd.
People need the Savior. They need the Lord Jesus, which leads us to the third and final section of this passage:
3. Jesus’ Call (Matt. 9:37-38)
37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. 38 Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matt. 9:37-38).
Jesus wanted His disciples to see the needs of the multitudes. They were sheep without a shepherd, and they needed to be led and guided. Shifting the metaphor from flock to field, Jesus now envisions a vast crop of ripe grain in need of harvesters.[7] There was a plentiful harvest, and there were few workers to bring it in. Jesus wants the disciples to recognize the need for workers.
Why does Jesus talk about a harvest? John MacArthur points out that in the Old Testament, the harvest is a picture of judgment.[8] Isaiah prophesies about judgments saying, gra“It shall be as when the harvester gathers the grain, And reaps the heads with his arm; It shall be as he who gathers heads of in … In the day you will make your plant to grow, And in the morning you will make your seed to flourish; But the harvest will be a heap of ruins In the day of grief and desperate sorrow.” (Isa. 17:5, 11). And the prophet Joel says, “12 Let the nations be wakened, and come up to the Valley of Jehoshaphat; For there I will sit to judge all the surrounding nations. 13 Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Come, go down; For the winepress is full, The vats overflow–For their wickedness is great. 14 Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! For the day of the LORD is near in the valley of decision.” (Joel 3:12-14). In Matthew 3, John the Baptist used this same picture to speak of Christ, “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clean out His threshing floor, and gather His wheat into the barn; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” (Matt. 3:12). In Matthew 13, Jesus uses this picture of judgment in the parable of the wheat and the tares, “Let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, ‘First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn.’ …Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of this age.” (Matt. 13:40 NKJV).”
So MacArthur says that Jesus sees the final judgment and calls laborers because the time is short, the need is great, and the consequences are eternal. “He preached to them and He healed them, because of His compassion, their condition, and the ultimate consummation.”[9]
This is no time to be idle. If we love Jesus and His kingdom’s cause, we should all be gripped with a sense of the urgency of the work that lies before us. As we see people around us every day, every one of these people is headed for judgment. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians,
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. 11 Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men … (2 Cor. 5:10-11).
But at the same time, passages like John 4:35-36 support the idea of the harvest being souls. “35 Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! 36 And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.”
Jesus sees the field white for harvest. It’s so ripe that the laborers must move quickly to harvest it. And yet, the laborers are too few. And what Jesus wants for these poor, lost, needy people is laborers who will go out and labor in the field! The harvest is plentiful. Even in a day such as ours, a day of secularism that seeks to push Jesus’ kingdom agenda off onto the sidelines as “irrelevant”, even now, the harvest is plentiful. The potential for the cause of Jesus’ kingdom is great. The problem is never that the work ceases to be a relevant work. The problem is always that the workers are too few! If we would have Jesus’ compassion for the lost and needy people around us, then we would want what He wants for them – laborers![10]
We see a lost and dying world that is entrapped in sin and the people in it are bruised and battered by sin and its effects. They are confused and lost without hope. The majority of them will die in that condition, but there are some who are responding to God’s call and workers are needed to lead them to Jesus Christ. That’s why Jesus said, “Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” (Matt. 9:38).
You might have expected Jesus to say, “So then; get out there into the field and start harvesting!” But that is not what He says. Instead, He calls us to pray. He says, “Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” This suggests the great scope of the work—the harvest field is great. Multiple thousands of people die every day without ever hearing about Christ. That is unacceptable. And you and I can make a difference. We can pray. We must pray. We must pray for our missionaries. We must pray for the nations. We must pray for God to send more workers into the world to spread the gospel.
Each of us is limited and can only touch so many lives. But Jesus wants us to be concerned with everyone—the whole field. So, when there are areas we cannot be personally involved in, yet see the need, we can still be involved by asking the Lord to send others. Most of our missions praying is directly along those lines. We pray for countries and people that need to be taught the Word of God and hear the gospel, and as we do God sends His workers there. We pray for His workers to go into the harvest.
In the original language, Jesus calls us to pray that laborers will be “cast out” or “thrown out” into the harvest. And this suggests to us a sense of urgency in the work. So we must pray because it is Lord’s work and it must be done in His way and in His timing and not ours. No one is fit to do the Lord’s work until they have sought Him first.
The opportunities are vast, for the harvest is plentiful, but to be used by the Lord you have to first see the need and have the compassion of Christ for sinners. Second, beseech the Lord for workers to meet those needs, and then third, do whatever the Lord wants you to do.
The Lord’s call to us is to pray with faith and trust in Him, to pray that workers will be sent out into the harvest. But then, you probably know what will happen if you begin to faithfully pray that the Lord would send workers out into His harvest. It might not be too long before your commitment to pray that prayer has changed you and has even prepared you for the harvest work that God has uniquely called you to! You too might soon hear His call to go!
As we look upon the lost and needy people of this world, may we go to them as Jesus went, serve them as Jesus served, see them as Jesus saw, feel toward them as Jesus felt, know about them what Jesus knew, want for them what Jesus wanted, and then pray for them as Jesus commanded.
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[1] Ray Fowler, Praying for More Workers. https://www.rayfowler.org/sermons/matthew/praying-for-more-workers/
[2] Greg Allen, The Compassionate Shepherd. https://www.bethanybible.org/archive/2005/111305.htm
[3] Craig Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 166.
[4] Greg Allen, ibid.
[5] Craig Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 166.
[6] Michael Green, The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven, The Bible Speaks Today (Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 128.
[7] Craig Blomberg, Matthew, vol. 22, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1992), 167.
[8] John MacArthur, The Harvest and the Laborers. https://www.gty.org/library/sermons-library/2269
[9] MacArthur, ibid.
[10] Allen, ibid.
