As they're doing that, you can turn with me to Luke's Gospel. We're continuing our series. We're now in Luke chapter 10, Luke's Gospel, the series entitled Kingdom Come. Before we turn our attention to God's Word, let's pray. Lord, freshly reminded of My weakness this morning, the battle is cold. Lord, your word, the preaching of your word, the success of your word, the ability of your word to accomplish all that you intend for it, it never depends on a human voice. It never depends on our giftedness. It is something that depends on your sovereign initiative. Something that depends on your immense grace to us in Christ Jesus. So now, as we come to your word, speak, Lord. You have spoken to us infallibly and inerrantly in the words of Scripture, and you have ordained that we should gather and hear the Scriptures proclaimed and exhorted. And so that's what we do now. Let us see Jesus. Let us Behold your glory and let us be changed. In Jesus' name, amen.
Well, every summer we go up to Iowa for vacation, either during the summer or in the spring, and we always take a trip to my grandpa and grandma Wasink's farm. And the thing you need to know about my grandpa and grandma Wasink's farm is my grandpa has literally lived his entire life in that farm. He was born in that farmhouse. This was back in the day. He's 90-some years old when you just brought the doctor out and you had the baby there in the kitchen, right? So he was born in that house. He was raised in that house. He has lived literally every year of his 90-plus years in that house. So his fingerprints are everywhere. It's one of those deals where you walk in the house too. It's just got all those typical things in grandpa and grandma's houses. All the, pictures of the grandkids, and now for my grandparents, the great-grandkids. It's got those typical ideas that they've got one of those pictures where someone was invited to the farm and took little snapshots all over the farm of things that look like letters. And so that picture, that's a collage that spells out Wasink, sits on the wall with pictures from the farm. One of the things that there, it's really humorous to me, is there's this picture of my 90-year-old grandpa around the age of 10. From the newspaper. And this only happens in small Midwestern towns, right? My grandpa is in the newspaper. Why? Because he picked a lot of corn. You can't make this stuff up. There's an article in the local paper because they had a record harvest that year. The yields were just through the roof. And my grandpa had picked some astounding number of bushels of corn. And so as a 10-year-old, he's standing— it's like those— they didn't have the ability to smile 90 years ago, right? So he's just standing there like completely dour, holding a basket of corn. And that's sitting in their house. And this is like his pride and joy. It's like he might as well have been All-State in basketball or something. He was the record corn picker that year. Welcome to rural Iowa. But it's a reminder we're not all that far removed from a day when the harvest wasn't done by big machines, the harvest was done by laborers. It was done by 10-year-old boys. My dad actually always jokes, my grandpa got in the newspaper, but it was actually his older sister who outpicked him. We're not that far removed, just a generation or two from when the harvest time happened. They would go out and take to the fields with baskets, and they would go in the humidity and the heat, They would harvest. And that's what would happen.
Well, that's what we see. It's that agrarian picture of the world that we see in Luke's Gospel this morning in Luke 10, this vision of the world as a harvest. And that God's means of gathering in the harvest is through laborers. So look with me now at Luke 10:1-6. 16. Hear God's holy and authoritative word. After this, the Lord appointed 72 others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, the harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way. Behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, 'Peace be to this house!' And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him; but if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you, heal the sick in it, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.' But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless, know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.' I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects me— the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me. The word of the Lord. May he write his truth upon our hearts.
Well, this is an interesting passage. We have transitioned out of Chapter 9, and right at the beginning, there's a difference. You see, chapter 9 focused on the 12, right? Chapter 9 is a chapter that focuses in on Jesus' ministry with the 12 specific disciples. We know their names. But now, the scope of Jesus' ministry, the scope of His vision gets expanded. It's not just the 12. Jesus now sends out 72. This expanded circle of followers. And he sends out these 72 essentially as vanguard missionaries, right? They go into towns two by two ahead of Jesus and his entourage, preparing the way for Jesus.
I think that is very significant for us. It's very easy to fall into the idea that this notion that big callings, you know, this idea of being a vanguard missionary for Jesus, right? Maybe a frontier missionary going to a place where the gospel has never been heard before, or just being a missionary, being someone who's sent. That only happens to certain people, to special people, to the Apostle Pauls and the Barnabases, these sort of super Christians. Now, there are uniquely gifted and called people with big visions and sometimes extraordinary callings, but that's not to the exclusion of the callings that God gives to ordinary believers. Right? And that's really the rub. The comparison between the extraordinary calling and the ordinary calling.
In the video we just watched about Grace Church in Bristol, right? He's speaking from this spot where John Wesley and George Whitefield preached the Gospel. The guys that stirred up the Great Awakening in the UK and the U.S. You want to talk about guys with extraordinary callings, those are two that come to mind. In all likelihood though, there's not a John Wesley or William Carey or, or a Whitefield or even a C.S. Lewis in this room today. Let's just be honest, right? Someone called in an extraordinary way, someone gifted unbelievably. Statistically, that person probably isn't here. But that doesn't mean there aren't called people here in this room.
6 · Traces the biblical-theological shift from the Old Testament's restricted callings (priests, prophets, kings) to the New Testament's democratization of calling visible in Luke 10's commissioning of the seventy-two, demonstrating progressive revelation in God's mission strategy
In the Old Testament, we look back and we see sort of a tighter vision of calling, don't we? You've got a very special select group of people who are priests. Not anyone could be a priest. You have to be from a certain tribe, and not all Levites are priests. Even from in that tribe, only certain people. And then you've got prophets, an even more select group. Sometimes we have this idea that prophets are just one prophet at a time, right? There's Isaiah, and there's Jeremiah, right? And there's Ezekiel. But there's actually overlap. Oftentimes there's multiple prophets operating at the same time. And yet there's this tighter calling, these prophets that are called to go to God's people and call them back to obedience. That's the prophet's primary job, right? To call people back to faithfulness to God's Word, to remind them of God's promises. And then it gets even tighter. Israel has one king, right? One man called to be the political leader, the spiritual tone setter of God's people. So we look at the Old Testament and it's only certain people, very certain people who get called. But now, living in the New Testament age, we have to realize things are different, right? There's been a shift. And we go to Luke 10, and we can't feel justified about this notion that it's only certain select people. That's part of the tension that happens between Luke 9 and Luke 10. In Luke 9, it's just the 12. These men who are going to be sent out with a very special calling. But now in Luke 10, it gets extended to these 72.
7 · Expounds Jesus' harvest metaphor to establish that the plentiful harvest requires many laborers, not a select few
God even says there's this massive harvest and the laborers are few. The point of that isn't to say there's not very many people called, right? Jesus' point is that there's this immense harvest out there and God is trying to motivate and encourage people This harvest is massive. Won't you be a part of the labor force that brings it in? He's getting to the point that this plentiful harvest will be brought in by the church. And so he's pressing us and he's encouraging us, don't shirk the opportunity that's in front of you. That's what the 72 represents. Not the eliteness of the Twelve or even the inner circle of Peter, James, and John, but this expanded— who are the 72, right? We don't know. We know nothing about them. Total anonymity. Who are these individuals? What are their names? What are their occupations? None of that information is given to us. It's because it's this broader calling of normal people that are being sent out. It's a precursor to exactly what Luke is going to talk about in the book of Acts, an entire movement of people saved by God, Jews and Gentiles, wealthy and poor, educated and barely literate, but all with the conviction that they have been saved by Christ, and so they are sent out by Christ. And that's something that we need to sense from the text this morning. That's a claim Luke 10 is making on, on Providence and all of us that are gathered here. This very biblical notion that if you are called by God, if the Spirit has acted on you, if the Spirit has regenerated you, then you also aren't just saved, you're being sent. You see, the New Testament makes no distinction between the saved and the sent. If you've been effectually called, if you've heard the gospel, and God's grace has fallen on you and you've responded to the gospel in faith and repentance, right? You are now called. Called to go out as ambassadors for the kingdom. If you're called, you've responded to the good news of Jesus Christ. And so that grace that once saved you is now meant to fill you as you go out into the world.
8 · Transitions from establishing the universal call to mission into the sermon's practical structure by asking how Jesus sends out those he is saving, setting up the three-point application that follows
I love Spurgeon, one of those fabulously gifted people, right? Spurgeon is one of the best preachers of all time. There were times when he would take all of 45 minutes to prepare a sermon, and he would get up and preach after 45 minutes of prep, and there is alliteration, there is brilliant illustrations, there is turning of phrases, and hundreds of people getting saved. Most of us aren't gifted like Spurgeon, but Spurgeon saw correctly here. He recognized the missional task given to the entire church. It's not just the Spurgeons or the Wesleys or the C.S. Lewises. Spurgeon quipped, 'Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.' That puts a point on it, doesn't it? Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter. The reality is, whenever God acts graciously upon you, He also intends to act graciously through you. Whenever God does something to you, He's then planning to do something through you. That's part of what we see in Luke 10. So how does Jesus send us out? As we look at His sending out of the 72, what can we pick up ourselves. How does Jesus send out those that He's saving?
9 · Establishes the first aspect of the sending—proclamation
Well, first, He sends us out to proclaim. It's the most basic thing. Jesus sends out the 72, right, as these vanguard messengers. And He tells them— we see it twice in our text— to tell them, 'The kingdom of God is near to you.' And He tells them, go report this good news to the people who are accepting it and to the people who are rejecting it. Proclaim this message: the kingdom of God has been brought near. It's a very simple message. You go from town to town and you announce the arrival of Jesus, and you tell them that with the arrival of Jesus, it isn't just some carpenter from Nazareth. No, it's the Messiah. And when Jesus comes to your town, the king is coming. And the kingdom with him. And these people that are sent out, the 72, they've been traveling with Jesus and they've heard this good news and they've experienced this good news. And so you get this sense that there's an eagerness now to announce it to others.
10 · Uses a vivid analogy from Ed Welch to make the gospel message fresh and emotionally compelling, capturing the stunning reversal that God offers rebels—not judgment but invitation to the wedding feast
One of my favorite little brief snippets and descriptions of the gospel. If we're not careful, the gospel, even just that word, can get just normal and dusty. Sometimes we gotta pick it up and blow it off and think in a fresh way. What is the gospel? I love how Ed Welch describes it in a nutshell. The gospel is the story of God covering his naked enemies, bringing them to the wedding feast, and then marrying them. Rather than crushing them. That's the good news. God giving us the exact opposite of what we deserve in Christ Jesus. And so the 72 is sent out with that good news. The kingdom has come near. The king is coming, and this city should know you are rebels and the king is coming, but the king isn't going to wipe your city off the face of the earth. The King is coming to deliver you. The King is coming to save you, to redeem you, to restore you, to bring health and healing and wholeness to your life. That's the message that they're sent out with.
11 · Draws an extended analogy from World War II citizen soldiers to illustrate that God's mission is carried out not by elite professionals but by ordinary believers with varied backgrounds who bring their unique experiences and skills to the kingdom's advance
The beauty of it, though, is there's nothing spectacular about those who carry the message. There's total anonymity about the 72. This totally anonymous group, they're probably no more remarkable than the fishermen and tax collectors that make up the 12, right? Maybe they're even less so, if there's something less remarkable than a Galilean fisherman. I was reading a book a few years ago, it was titled Citizen Soldier, and it's by Stephen Ambrose, who's one of the more popular historians of of World War II. And the premise of Citizen Soldier is to tell the story of World War II not from the perspective of the Eisenhowers, right, and the Montgomerys and the Pattons, not to tell the story of the war from FDR or Churchill or Hitler's perspective, but to tell the story of World War II from the viewpoint of just the normal grunt on the ground, your average soldier. These citizens that made up the army. The reality is when America goes to war against Nazi Germany, right, and against Japan, there's not this massive standing army in the United States that gets mobilized in a week and a half and then sent overseas. There's this little tiny army and they need to call in citizens to pick up arms and to fight. It's not lifelong career soldiers and sailors and Marines who win the field at Normandy or who hold out against all odds at Guadalcanal. No, it's just average young American boys. And so the book recounts the marvel of this war and that these normal boys from Brooklyn to Boise, these boys with nothing incredible about their backgrounds, are the ones who defeat the better trained, in some ways better equipped armies that they're facing, Germany and Japan, who have been building and preparing for war for decades. It's a remarkable thing. Ambrose recounts, as they would go and they would hit the battlefield, you start fighting a war and bullets are flying and stuff starts breaking down, right? But what partly helped the Americans achieve success was as their Jeeps are breaking down, it's these boys from Boise who are jumping out and with their know-how from living on the farm and fixing tractors, they're duct taping together Jeeps and keeping them going. When they hit Normandy, right in the beaches, one of the greatest intelligence failures of the war happens. They realize they've been taking pictures of Normandy from the sky and what just looks like nice little bushes are actually these massive Norman hedgerows. And the army's getting bogged down, the tanks can't get through it, and it's the ingenuity of these citizens turned soldiers to figure out how to blow holes through the hedgerows. These citizen soldiers, not that different from Washington's citizen soldiers in the Revolutionary War, are the ones who beat the professional army. It's this remarkable thing. But implicit in this citizen army is the understanding of these boys that on December 12, 1941, the world has changed. And so on December 12, after December 11 and Pearl Harbor, they're filling these recruiting stations with this understanding that to be a citizen of this great republic means that you have to be ready to serve at a moment's notice.
12 · Applies the citizen soldier analogy directly to the congregation, identifying specific people (suburbanites, students, housewives) as the ones God is calling to proclaim the gospel using their own unique rescue stories in their everyday contexts
I think that's an apt analogy for how God calls us to be engaged and to be prepared to proclaim the kingdom. We're a lot like these citizen soldiers. It's not that we have elite training, right? It's not that we're super special and everyone's seminary educated, right? And everyone can parse Greek or knows Hebrew or has advanced linguistic studies. And so they're able to go to the far reaches of the world. Now, it's citizens from Lenexa and Overland Park, students at JuCo, right? Housewives living on Quivira who God is calling out. Citizen soldiers, citizen heralds going out with our own unique stories of God's rescue. Each with a distinct experience of God's multifaceted grace and the particular way that we've experienced that incredible grace of being rescued and redeemed and renovated by King Jesus. And God intends to use those stories. He intends to use your story to herald that good news, to proclaim that the kingdom is near to your next-door neighbor, to the person in the cubicle right beside you.
13 · Argues that gospel-centeredness at Providence must not be truncated to internal formation alone—it necessarily includes an outward missionary focus
We love to talk about gospel application at Providence, and it is good. We want to see the gospel applied. We talk about being a gospel-centered church, which is just another way of saying we think the gospel is the main thing and we're never moving beyond the main thing to something more significant. The gospel isn't just what gets us saved. It remains at the center of who we are as believers, forming us. It's the whole point of this book that you can pick up as a guest, The Cross-Centered Life. The gospel is at the center of who we are as a church. But here's the thing. If we think of being cross-centered, of being gospel-centered, as only having to do with inward things and internal things, we're missing part of the point. The Gospel has to do with inward and internal things. The Gospel plays a massive role, an essential role, in forming us into Christlikeness. The Gospel does that. But part of Gospel application, part of being Gospel-centered, is that as the Gospel forms us into Christlikeness, it stirs up this awareness. You're citizen soldiers. You're citizen ambassadors. You are called to go out with that same gospel. And so we can't truncate what we mean by being gospel-centered. Gospel-centered isn't just gathering in small groups, gathering in care groups to seek growth in holiness. It is that, but that growth in holiness is meant to stir us to to then look up and to look out to see the community and the world around us. It's a significant thing that Luke 10 reminds us of. I think Luke 10 calls us to. Luke 10 shows us the call to follow Jesus, the call to be a disciple, the call to encounter the Gospel and be saved by the Gospel, to grow in the Gospel, is in part to have an inherently outward focus, to see the people around us and to long to tell them, 'Here is how I experienced Jesus. Here is the good news of the gospel. Here is how it changed my life. Let me tell you how the kingdom has come near.'
14 · Signals the structural shift from the first point (proclaim) to the second point (portray), introducing the idea that mission involves both verbal proclamation and embodied demonstration
So Jesus sends us out to proclaim. Right? He also sends us out to portray.
15 · Expounds Jesus' unusual instructions about traveling light and staying in one house, showing that these directives teach the seventy-two to depend on God's provision rather than human strategies and to embody the inclusive nature of the kingdom through their lifestyle choices, not seeking social advancement through ministry
We don't just share a message with our neighbors, we're also called to share our lives. Jesus sends us out not just to proclaim a message, but to portray how that message has changed us. It's part of the fascinating details of how Jesus sends the 72 out. He doesn't just tell them, go through all the villages and say the kingdom is near. This passage we just read would be all 5 verses, right? No, there's a whole bunch more detail. Jesus has some strange instructions. He tells them, 'Take no money bag, no knapsack, no sandals. You go to a house and you bless that house. And if no one will receive you, you wipe the dust off your feet.' What does He mean by those strange instructions? It's partially a challenge to the faith of the 72. You take no knapsack, right? No sandals. In other words, you're not going to go out and have like this whole caravan of stuff. You're going to go out and it's a burn your boats going out. We are going out ahead of Jesus, trusting that he's going to provide, trusting that in every city God's grace is going to be sufficient to save people. It's also this recognition You don't have all of these strategies and all these techniques that are going to turn the day for you. You're not going to come in like Dick Van Dyke, you know, like singing songs and, you know, playing the drums and, you know, with the harmonica and, whoa, look at this. And that's why, you know, you got none of that stuff. You got no gadgets. You got the message. The kingdom is near and you've got your life. How that message has transformed you. And that's how you will come in. It's also a recognition. You go to one house and you stay in that house. This is a direct contradiction to how most itinerant preachers operated in that day. You'd come to a town and you hopefully get invited into somebody's house. And as you're there, you build a reputation and people realize, hey, he's a good teacher. He's a good speaker. He's influential. Right? And so then wealthier people come along and say, well, don't stay over there. That's kind of the wrong side of the tracks. Come into our bigger home. And so they would pick up and they would move to the nicer house and get more patronage and more goodies. And Jesus says that that's not how we operate in the kingdom. We're not out here for dishonest gain. There's a place for the worker to receive his wages. He should be fed. He should be clothed. He should be housed. But you're not leveraging the good news to get rich. But all of it shows that there is a way they live, a way they enter these cities, the way they go about their lives that bears witness. It underscores the truth of the good news they're proclaiming, right? Everything about how they live on mission is meant to match the message of their mission. Jesus sends them out in a totally different manner. To the way other people would come into their cities. Their lives should display the reality that the kingdom of God isn't about favorites. The kingdom of God isn't about just the upper class to the exclusion of lower classes. The kingdom of God is for everyone.
16 · Asserts that discipleship and mission happen in the mundane rhythms of everyday life, where all Christians—not just pastors or leaders—are sent to display Christ through their ordinary interactions with unbelievers, inviting them into genuine relationship rather than treating them as evangelistic projects
There's a real sense that how they live their lives on mission is meant to underscore everything they proclaim, not just a message of discipleship, right? Not just a message of the kingdom, but a lifestyle of those things. Jeff Vanderstelt is a guy who's written a book called Saturate. He's a very gifted teacher and he writes on the subject of being a disciple and how you're called to be a disciple in the everyday stuff of life. So the whole idea is the disciple-makers aren't just pastors, disciple-makers aren't just care group leaders or deacons, right? Disciple makers, disciples who multiply and make immature disciples, are all Christians. And the way that we go about doing that is in the mundane things of life. He says this: Everywhere you go, whatever you do, you are a missionary sent by Jesus to love like Jesus, to overcome sin like Jesus, to proclaim the gospel like Jesus, to see people's lives changed by the power of the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead. Now the point of that isn't that you are Jesus, but that you display in the normal rhythms of life who Jesus is, how he's changed you, and how he's continuing to change you. We're being sent out like the 72, in just the normal things of life, to live in the midst of unbelievers, to make time for them, to invite them into your homes, to even pursue opportunities to interact with them, not because they're projects, right? Not they're notches to get on your evangelistic belt, but because the kingdom of God has come near. These are neighbors who are perishing, and we have the opportunity opportunity to invite them to the feast of the kingdom. And not just to invite them, we get to bring them to the feast and then we get to drink and eat next to them. That's the good news of the gospel, to show love and kindness and mercy to people who without Jesus have no real reason to celebrate.
17 · Provides an extended personal narrative of the preacher's experience on his son's baseball team, demonstrating how ordinary life contexts (youth sports) become mission fields where believers portray the gospel through compassion, character, and counter-cultural behavior before ever having explicit gospel conversations
Now what does that look like? I think part of what we see in Scripture, there's no place you go to that just lays out the 12-point discipleship plan. Right? It's not there. In some ways we think it would be nice if it was. But in part there's this inherent flexibility to recognize you're called and you're filled. And the same Spirit who has effectually called you and now filled you will guide you as you go about living your life in the midst of those around you. Which is just another way of saying your pastors don't have all the answers for what this looks like. In the same way Peter, James, and John don't have all the answers for what it looks like. The opening chapters of Acts and really kind of throughout the whole book of Acts is the early church kind of stumbling and trying to— how do we do this? We're supposed to go not just to Jerusalem, But to Judea and to Samaria and to the ends of the earth? I've never been outside Galilee, Jesus. And Jesus doesn't leave them this massive instruction manual. He leaves them something much better. He leaves them the Spirit. He leaves them God's Word. That as they go, as they live their life, they would interact with people and proclaim and portray how the kingdom has come near. Here's an idea, an example. This isn't like, oh, look at me and how I'm doing it well. It's a, I'm trying to figure this out with you. We signed Case up for a baseball team, specifically tried to sign him up for a baseball team with a bunch of his classmates at the elementary school. In part because I like baseball and he likes baseball and we wanted to play it, but also strategically because this is an opportunity to gather with these people and chew the fat with them, to play catch with them, to get to know the parents on this team. And I have to confess, this last year on the team, part of what I enjoyed about it was the anonymity of it. For the first half of the season, nobody knew that I was a pastor. Nobody knew that Hannah was a pastor's wife. We were just regular parents from the class. Just the people that lived on Nolan Road. That's all that we were. And it was kind of nice to get to just interact with them without any of the baggage of, 'Oh, you're a pastor?' But that's not to say it would have been okay for us to be incognito Christians. In that context, right? It'd be very tempting to not just kind of take a break from wearing the pastor hat when I'm with people, but also to take a break from, from wearing the Christian hat. And I'm just going to anonymously sit here with these parents week after week, month after month, and give no explanation, bear no testimony with my life. That I am different, that we have been saved, and that in us being on the team in a unique way, the kingdom has drawn near. Somebody filled with the Spirit of Christ Jesus is in their midst. So here's how this played out. It ended up the coach of the team was a total yahoo. I mean, this guy was just out of control. There's no other way to say it. He got reported at the end of the year in the tournament. Other parents from other teams were going to the leaders like he was that quintessential baseball parent, yelling at people, yelling at the kids. It got to the point where there was myself and another guy named Kevin on the team who were two believers, and we made it a point— we weren't even really supposed to be coaches on the team— we would just go out in the field and coach the other players to preemptively strike the coach blowing his lid and yelling at the kids. And it really came to a head in the tournament where all of a sudden there was something to play for, for a bunch of 6-year-olds, right? Lots of glory to be had on this Little League field. And this poor little kid Tommy, Tommy's a spaz, right? Which is another way of saying Tommy's a 6-year-old boy. He's just like full of energy and hyper and so he's playing shortstop and he's looking at the clouds and he's like, and the ball gets hit and it goes through his leg. And the coach just blows it in front of the whole crowd. You know, it's just fire coming out of his mouth. And Tommy's just crushed. We get to the dugout and Tommy's in the hole, right? He's supposed to bat. And he's just sitting there fighting back tears, this little 6-year-old. He doesn't even want to go hit. And it was just as simple as Kevin and I coming around Tommy and just showing compassion to him and just encouraging him. And that little example, along with countless other things that we had done during the season, just expressing we're not like this guy. We're not living for the glory of 6-year-old baseball. And that's kind of hard for me to admit. You know, like when Case gets a couple hits, I'm like, my son, my genes, right? When he goes 0 for 3, it's like, 'Well, Hannah...' There's a tempted part of my heart to think that way. But Kevin and I had all these opportunities through the season to love on these kids and to show compassion and to coach them, to encourage them in aspects of character. And at the end of the season, they came to Kevin and they asked us, 'Would you guys be willing to coach the team next year?' We haven't had explicit opportunities to share the gospel, but there's been a portrayal of the gospel that has them wanting us to take center for what's happening with the team. And then one of the families, one of the parents, they live just down the road from here. We sat in our care group this fall. These are people we're praying for. We're having them over. We're trying to leverage this interaction. They finally— the cat came out of the bag. They realize as a pastor, we're on the soccer team now with them. And so he would come on Sundays and probably waking up after drinking too much on Saturday night, but the first thing he would ask me is, 'How was the service?' And so I'm just leveraging that as an opportunity. Christmas Eve service comes along and Hannah specifically calls her up and just says, 'I'd love it if you'd come to the Christmas Eve service. You know, Kasey's singing in the choir.' Her response, she's just a very honest person, 'Well, I probably won't come. That would get in the way of my paganism.' Well, calling a spade a spade, right? But there are opportunities in the midst of normal things of life to build with these people, to portray to these people, and to proclaim to these people. But also, in hearing the honesty of her answer, to pray for them.
18 · Expounds the third aspect of the sending—prayerfulness
And that's the last thing we see in this text. Jesus sends us out with a vision of prayerfulness. And that's such a freeing vision. The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. You got your work cut out for you. No. Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest. The point is, we're not responsible for the massive harvest. God is. God is the one who's tilled the ground. He's brought the rain. He's germinated the seeds of faith that are sitting in those previously hard hearts. And our call is to pray and then to go. In other words, our success isn't measured in numbers. It's measured in faithfulness. Pray to the Lord of the harvest. You will save no one. God will. So pray, proclaim, and portray. It's so helpful. One of the great evangelists of all time, John Bunyan, a man who was imprisoned countless times for preaching the gospel, said, you can do more than pray after you have prayed, but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed. That's a helpful perspective. Spurgeon again says, 'Prayer moves the arm that moves the world.'
19 · Explains that prayer transforms the believer's posture toward those who reject the gospel, turning hostility into compassion
Part of the reason why I think we're called to pray is because in this text, in this passage, are woes against the cities and the citizens of those cities who reject the gospel. It is so easy. You hear the pastor in the video talk about Bristol and the entire UK about this post-Christian culture, right? There's two ways to process that. And really, is the US that different right now? There's two ways to process that. This is a post-Christian culture. We are surrounded by the enemy, the barbarian hordes, you know, like the Capital One commercials, right? That's how you can view it. Or we are surrounded by opportunity. And I think prayer is what changes your perspective. If you're sitting there pining away at what's happening in the culture and the world, they're the opposition. They're the barbarian hordes. It's the pagan mom on the baseball team. When you pray, there's a compassion that's built up. Part of the purpose of woes in the scriptures isn't just for us to feel calloused, like, 'Yeah, you're gonna get zapped!' No, there's a heartbrokenness. 'Woe to you. The kingdom has drawn near and you're failing to see it.' And so when we pray for these parents, the pagan mom, there's a softening that says, 'Lord, open her eyes. Let her see.' Prayer breaks our hearts over the state of the lost, and it increases our heart for mission.
20 · Issues the closing charge summarizing the sermon's three imperatives: pray to the Lord of the harvest, proclaim the kingdom's nearness, and portray that message through transformed lives
So let us be a church that prays, prays to the Lord of the Harvest. And let us be a church that proclaims and portrays the Kingdom is near.
21 · The closing prayer rehearses the sermon's themes before God, asking Him to raise up laborers at Providence, bring in a harvest in Johnson County, and help the congregation grow in holiness so their lives compellingly portray Christ's reconciling, redeeming, restoring work
Would you bow your heads? Lord, you are the Lord of the Harvest. Lord, there are many people in this city who are yours. But who don't know Jesus yet. And so, Lord, we call upon you now, the Lord of the Harvest, and we ask that you would move. Lord, we pray to the hand that moves the universe, trusting that our prayers will move your hand. You want to be asked, Lord, and so we ask, Lord, would you bring in a harvest here in Johnson County, in Kansas City? Lord, would you raise up a labor force here at Providence of people who are freshly mindful of the gospel and who have a fresh sense of the way that gospel calls us to grow in Christ-likeness, to treasure you with all of our hearts, and also to go out with the good news. Lord God, would you help us to portray the gospel? Lord, help us to grow in holiness, to put on Christlikeness, so that when people encounter us, there would be compelling lives, that they would see marriages testifying to a different way, or that they would see parenting, that they would see relationships of siblings, Lord, countless ways that our lives would portray the reality that Jesus reigns and that Jesus reconciles, that Jesus redeems, that Jesus restores, that Jesus makes all things new. Lord God, we pray these things and ask for you to move. Bring in a great harvest, Lord. In Jesus' name, amen.