We often wait for someone else to step into the work God has placed before us. In Matthew 9:37–38, Jesus calls us to recognize the harvest, pray for laborers, and listen for where the Lord is sending us.

Study Questions

The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.

Jesus calls the harvest “plentiful” rather than simply warning that “judgment is coming.” What is the difference between these two framings, and how should that change the way we communicate the gospel to others?
The sermon uses the image of a last warm day before a cold front to illustrate the urgency of recognizing the season. Where do you currently see (or miss) that urgency in your own life, and what might be keeping you from responding?
Verse 38 commands prayer for laborers, yet those same disciples are immediately sent as the answer to that prayer. How do praying and going belong together in your life, and how might God be exposing your own role through your prayers?
In 1 Corinthians 3:6, Paul says “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” What part of the harvest has God given you right now—planting, watering, or encouraging—and how does trusting Him with the growth free you from needing to see the whole crop yourself?
Lawnchair Larry’s motto was “a man can’t just sit around.” How does that story, alongside Jesus repeatedly sending imperfect waves of workers, challenge or encourage you to step into the specific gifts and position God has already given you?

Transcript

This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.

Can you believe we’re coming to harvest time? No, it can’t be right. He’s going to do his best to make us think it’s absolutely not right. But if you drive by any field this week, you can tell it’s coming. You can see the fields turning brown and ready for harvest. There’s a time that’s the right time to get crops, right? If you went out and harvested before the crops were ripe, you would get something, but it wouldn’t be all that usable. And you could wait too long and the crops could rot. Maybe you have that happen in your own garden, right? You think, ah, I’m going to let that tomato on just one more day. And it either just sits there a little too long and starts to soften, or some of the helpful fauna of your backyard decide to help you out with it. One of the two or both. And you miss out on it.

If in a few weeks you decide you were going to go apple picking, and you look around the trees, if there’s a tree that the apples are ripe and no one went and picked them, what are they doing? They’re falling off onto the ground and rotting. It’s so, so crucial that we pay attention to the season. And as we wrap up this series that’s been looking at Matthew 8 and 9, and we think about everything we’ve seen, all the miracles, all the different ways that Jesus has shown his power, the key thing that he wants people to hear, the key thing that all that was pointing to, is do you feel the season changing? Do you know what season it is? It’s so, so important to know and then to act. That’s still true today. So let’s pray that God would help us to understand the season and to respond accordingly. Let’s pray.

Father, we do come before you as those who often don’t know what season it is. We let the crops stay in the field too long or we harvest them too early. But Lord, you know what time it is and you tell us what time it is. Would you help us to hear, to see you working, and then to respond as you send us out to work. We pray in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.

So if you want to turn with me to Matthew 9, we’re in verses 37 and 38 tonight. We begin right here in verse 37. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” It’s harvest time. Jesus says the fields, they’re turning brown. It’s time for the harvest.

Now, this harvest imagery can be a bit challenging if you’re familiar with the Bible, maybe less so if you’re not. Because if you’re just thinking purely our experience, right, what does harvest time mean? It means we can go get some apples. It means that we can go get some pretty decorative corn to put on the porch, maybe until the squirrels enjoy it. And you get some pumpkins. And it’s just all good, right? And, of course, harvest is a good time if you’re a farmer in any period of time in the world. And so certainly it was good also for Israelite farmers.

But in Scripture in particular, harvest is often used to speak of God’s coming judgment, that there’s going to be a time when he’s going to reap what he has sown. And that way it’s a little bit less plentiful cornucopia and a little bit more grim reaper, right? It doesn’t sound necessarily good. And so some commentators have said here what Jesus is saying is not how we think of harvest, typically, but that more negative sense, God’s judgment is coming. But I don’t think that’s actually what Jesus is saying here.

If you just look at how he phrases it, he doesn’t say, “The harvest is coming, be alert.” He doesn’t say, “The harvest is coming, make sure to get in before the cold winter winds.” What does Jesus say? “The harvest is plentiful.” When do you talk about plentiful harvest? When you want to celebrate it. This is something good that is here that Jesus is talking about. It’s not an exclusion to the other, but we need to understand that Jesus is recasting it to say, “I want you to understand what that really means. What does the day of the Lord mean? What does it mean that there will be a day that, yes, it includes judgment, but what’s the overall picture of it?” And when he talks about it being plentiful, what he’s saying is, “I’m not speaking primarily the end is near,” but the end is near. It’s near. It’s joyful. This is not mourn and gnash your teeth. This is get ready for Thanksgiving dinner. This is good.

The key is to recognize that. Sometimes people even say today, “Well, I know that the Lord’s going to return, but I hope not quite yet because I have a few things to do.” And if we really understood what Jesus is saying here, we wouldn’t ever say that. And I’m not saying that because it’s not something that you’re weird if you’ve ever thought or said, but rather it’s because we don’t soak in enough. What wonder it is for the kingdom to be near. Because if we call on Jesus, if he is our Lord and savior, then the kingdom being near, it’s a very, very good thing.

You need to know the time. It’s kind of funny. We know the world is broken, right? We get that. I so appreciate all of your prayers this week. It’s been a very challenging week. And every time that we’re faced with that brokenness that we see in death, we’re reminded this is not good how things are right now. We’re right when we say of death, this is not how it’s supposed to be because you know what? It isn’t.

And when Jesus says the end is near, what he’s saying is the end of brokenness and death and pain and sorrow and all of that awful ugliness of the world is near. And because that season is coming, we need to be aware of what’s happening and be ready for it and help others to be ready for it.

Luke chapter 10. This is just a little while after what’s happening in the passage in Matthew that we’ve been in. Luke chapter 10, verse 2, Jesus uses the same metaphor and he says, “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.” Sounds very similar. But Jesus has to say it over and over again because he has to remind different groups of people. Matthew chapter 9, Luke chapter 9 have a lot of parallels. Luke chapter 8, we have this overlap there that if you look at it, you get a little more detail in Luke that Jesus sends out the 12 and then he sends out the 72. So he’s sending out waves of people to go and proclaim the kingdom.

But why is he doing that? Because there’s something worth telling. There’s something that needs to be said and told and celebrated. But we’ll think about more next week. We’re going to launch off of chapter 10 into the rest of the Bible with a series I’ll talk about in a bit. But Jesus repeatedly sends. Throughout the story of the Bible, it’s a story of people being sent time and time and time again to announce the brokenness of the world actually has an answer. There is hope. There is a harvest coming. And if we respond to that change of season, it’s a good thing.

This next week, like I said, it’s not going to feel very much like harvest time. There’s a change in seasons coming. Well, maybe it will feel like a change of seasons, but we’re going to think we’re back in June, right? We’re rewinding here. Seasons are going backwards this year. It’s been a very weird year, but it’s going to be very, very hot.

But it seems like inevitably every year you get to that day, maybe it’s in October, maybe it’s in November here in Missouri, at least. That day where it’s really nice and warm, maybe even short weather, it’s pleasant outside. But you know that day that there’s a front coming in. And on the one side of the front, it feels like it is summertime or at least a beautiful fall season. And on the other side, there is bitter cold.

I think we had that, I believe it was last year, maybe it was two years ago. It’s kind of blurring in my head. But somewhere in there, I remember being outside, and it was just beautiful outside. And you could do whatever you needed to get done outside. And then you knew that night, you could feel the wind kind of blowing a little bit. And by that night, there was this strong wind. And the next day, it was down to, I think, 32 or something.

I always am amazed. I think about people years ago that couldn’t pull out their phone and check the weather app. That’s sometimes right. I mean, at least it’s sometimes right. I’d be in so much trouble if I went back in time somehow. Obviously, people back then were better at paying attention to such things. But, oh, this is great weather, right? And then the cold wind comes in and the frost and so on. And I’m not ready for it at all. But today, we go in here, and I can see, oh, it’s 93 right now. And it’s going to be hot all week. I’m safe for the moment, right? But that last warm day will come. It’s going to be here.

Indeed, there will be a day of God’s judgment, too. That front will come. And if people don’t hear, if people don’t respond, if people don’t have the warmth of the Lord, it is going to be a cold, cold day. The harvest is near. It will be a warning. But that urgency that Jesus is sending out wave after wave of workers has more than a warning. There’s a warm breeze in it itself. There’s warm coats being offered. There’s promise of something better, of something fresher. There’s good news.

Jesus doesn’t send his disciples out to tell the world how bad they are and how doomed they are. He sends them out to tell them what hope they have. We’re already doomed. We’re already in this brokenness. We’re already facing down death and sorrow. But there’s an alternative. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s not meant to be this way.

And so Jesus takes wave after wave of disciples and sends them out because there is an urgency. If there is that front coming and you knew and I didn’t, it might be actually quite pleasant inside with a nice warm blanket and a nice fire and plenty of supplies for the winter. It could be okay. But it’s not going to be okay if I don’t know. If I’m just standing out there thinking it’s always going to be 70 degrees and pleasant.

And as Jesus is sending out these disciples in succession, he’s saying, go and tell the people that the season’s here and they need to respond. Still, I think about the fields. Driving by corn a few weeks ago, I thought, you know, it looks probably like it’s time to harvest. Yeah, it looks pretty good. But what I know, I’m not an eligible farmer and clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about because it’s still there. But when it’s actually right to harvest it, when you’re going to get the best crop, the best tasting if it’s for human consumption or most nutritious for the animals, if it’s for animal consumption, they know all that. I don’t.

And so to a degree, we can say, well, same thing here, right? Jesus knows the season and Jesus commissioned certain people, missionaries, evangelists, professional church workers. They can take care of the harvest. They’re the ones that know, right? Because they’ve been trained or God’s given them a particular calling. It’s got to do with us.

Well, if it’s all about knowing how to tend the field ourselves, it would seem very little and it would seem very bad if it has more than little to do with us. But that’s not the case. If I went down and started trying to harvest a field, it would go very, very poorly almost immediately. But if the farmer needed some help and just needs an extra pair of hands, it might go okay as long as I could listen, right? That’s what God’s calling us to do, to understand the season is here and the farmer is here and we need his help, but he’s here with us.

Verse 38. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. What? Doesn’t quite sound like that. Sounds like I’m supposed to pray for other people to go, right? We’ll just pray. Isn’t that, that’s actually, oh, right. I’m just going to pray that God is going to send out people to harvest. That’s what Jesus said here.

Sounds really pretty good, right? Why don’t we gather every week and we will pray for people to go and harvest the field. And we should do that. Who do we pray to? We pray to the Lord. And he’s not just the Lord, he’s the Lord of the harvest. This is his harvest. He’s not responding to the harvest. The season isn’t one where it’s immovable and he just has to deal with it. He’s the one that actually brings the harvest to bear. And so we do come and we do pray to him.

But a critical thing about him being the Lord of the harvest is he wants us to understand that he’s not just abstractly the Lord of the harvest. And everything we’ve been seeing in Matthew 8 and Matthew 9 has been about that. Because when one comes who can defeat death, when one comes who can defeat illness, when one comes who can cast out demons and restore a person from his sins, one comes who isn’t just one, he’s the one, he’s the farmer. The farmer has come. And he does have the world in his hands.

And if the farmer’s here, and he’s saying it’s time to go harvest, the appropriate response isn’t to wave and say, you go farmer. It’s to hop on the truck as he puts the bed down and says hop on in, it’s time to go. It’s time to go harvest. It’s about praying. But part about praying for laborers in the field is about praying for God to expose to our own hearts where it is that we can be those harvesters. That we can go do it.

And the very next chapter, when Jesus sends out the 12, or again, if we look over in Luke where he sends out the 12 and then the 72, these are the very people Jesus was telling to go pray to the Lord of the harvest for laborers. And what does he do? He says, guess what? You’re the laborers. Go. Go and do it. So the two aren’t separate things. There isn’t the praying for laborers clause. They go hand in hand.

And as we pray, yes, we’re praying for others. Maybe there’s a particular spot where it’s not your calling to be there, whether it’s in a particular land or a particular position or whatever it might be. It may not. Not every place is for every person. But there is a place that God has for us to go. There aren’t those who are exempt. You don’t go to the harvesting Selective Service Office and say, see, I have this exemption for me, right? I don’t qualify for harvesting.

No, you do. We all do. And the key is for us to be right. And the key is for us to be right. We all do. And the key is for us to be ready for that. And to, yes, pray, but be praying and listening as we pray. God, show me how there’s so much harvest to do. Help me to see where my part is in that. Help me to know what to say, when to say. Because it’s not always straightforward, right? Just like it isn’t straightforward harvesting a field. There are times where going and blindly harvesting may actually be destructive.

And so we should absolutely pray that the farmer, the one who knows, is the one who’s guiding us. This isn’t a call for us to somehow know more than anyone else and to do this just right, to have it all worked out, but rather to see how God has gifted us and then to respond to that.

One of the things that I’m going to really, really miss hearing from my cousin is when he’d be talking, sometimes when he was actually working on my back, sometimes just more generally, but he’d be talking about the human body. And it was so interesting to hear him as a doctor speaking about it because what he’d say is that he was really there just to get my own self out of the way of this wonderful thing that God had made that could heal itself. And he’d talk about the wonders of what God had done with the body.

And I think about how many times, how many people did he share that with? How many people did he encourage by talking about how God could work on the body? That you could be this well-studied doctor and what you see when you see the body is the wonder of God’s creation. It isn’t always going to be the same for every one of us. You know, he was never a missionary, but I have to think he encouraged an awful lot of people in a lot of ways and that was one of them. Just this being there in the moment, seeing how God is working in that moment. And you have those places, those places where you can testify to God’s glory and how he works and encourage someone else with that.

We’re all sent. We’re not all going to learn Swahili and move and try to use it. Thankfully, especially we’re not all commissioned to learn in Marik because I understand that is absolutely torturous for those that do that. And I’m thankful for missionaries like Shelly who undergo the pain of figuring out how to work with that language and minister. But we’re all gifted. We’re not all gifted to be doctors and talk about the wonder of how God works in that way either, but we’re all gifted in something. There’s something that God’s commissioned you to do and in that you can testify to God’s glory. And in that you can help someone who might wonder if there really is a God.

We’re working together at this. Jesus doesn’t send out one perfect apostle. He doesn’t send out 72 or skip 72 and send out 10 perfect disciples. No, he sends out 72, he sends out 12. We know all of them were imperfect. He sends out more at Pentecost, more and more and more. We see that expanding action of sending over and over again. And we’re all gifted in that. And talking about how they can be a part of the mission, it changes over time in the specific context.

But what does the guy keep doing? He keeps sending and saying, look at what, look at what I’ve given for you to do. Use that. Use that. Use that. Use that. Use that. Use that. Use that. Why do we keep sending people on missions? Because it’s time. Why do we keep preparing and talking about how it’s also something that we need to do? Because it’s time.

If the frost is coming and there’s a bountiful harvest in the field, do we just say, well, I hope the farmer can move fast enough? Well, of course he’s got, he can, but he has chosen us to go and work. He’s chosen you. He’s chosen you. He’s chosen me. He’s chosen us to go and work. And he says, I want you to go do it now. And you’re not going to do all of it. You don’t have to know how to run the combine. You don’t have to know how to load it up into the silo. You don’t need to know everything. You just need to know the part that God’s commissioned you to do.

First Corinthians 3:6, just a little bit before where we looked earlier. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. Think about that. What’s Paul saying there? We’re not all going to be those who see every step. If you’ve planted things, say we’ve seen the seeds in our garden. It’s very satisfying when you see it grow all the way, but putting the seeds in the ground themselves and just standing there and looking at the dirt isn’t terribly satisfying.

Sometimes what God’s sending us to do in the harvest in itself isn’t very satisfying. When you’re listening to someone who’s hurting and you think you know the answer, but you just bite your tongue and you listen so that they know that you’re actually someone whom they can talk to. It sometimes isn’t the most satisfying. But it’s not about us being fully satisfied in the moment, seeing the fullness of it, but understanding that God is working something bigger and simply saying, God, help me to understand where is it that you have me right now? What is it that you want me to do right now?

And for Paul, that meant sometimes getting something started, planting those seeds, and then knowing that one of his compatriots in the ministry, Apollos is going to come. Apollos is going to come and he’s going to disciple those people and they’re going to grow. And you know what? Probably some of them probably cared more about Apollos than Paul. Because Apollos was the one as they were really starting to understand. And there were going to be others that were going to come and they were going to care maybe more about them than Paul. It wasn’t going to be in itself satisfying, but here was the thing. If you can pull back from our own human desire to see that and just look at the harvest happening, Paul looks and says, God’s the one bringing the growth.

And so what I do and what Apollos does, what everyone who’s ministering does is some part of the same thing. It’s not two separate things. Apollos didn’t erase what Paul did. Paul didn’t do all of it and Apollos was just there getting in the way. It’s all part of how the Lord brings growth. And so the key thing is we understand we need to do something and we need to do something directed by him.

I read a while back about a man by the name of Larry Walters. I’m not sure if anyone here, does anyone know Larry Walters? How about Lawnchair Larry? Anyone know Lawnchair Larry? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Jim knows. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Lawnchair Larry, in the early 1980s, came up with an idea. He thought, if I took my lawn chair and I went and bought weather balloons and attached the weather balloons to my lawn chair… maybe I went to the army surplus store and bought 42 weather balloons and I filled them with helium, maybe I could fly. You see, ever since he was a young teen, he had yearned for the experience of flying and he wanted to fly in a hot air balloon, but he wasn’t a pilot. I presume he didn’t have the funds to pay to ride in a hot air balloon. So he decided the next best thing would be to build something sort of like his own.

And so here’s what he did. He got his lawn chair. He tied it down with some weights, some gallon jugs, and got his cooler with his six-pack of beer and some sandwiches, filled up the balloons with helium, grabbed a BB gun, sat down in the chair and was getting it all arranged. And then he was going to pause. He thought maybe he should alert the authorities. But as he was going to pause to do that, he or someone helping him accidentally kicked the weights off and up he went. And lawn chair Larry actually took off and experienced flight.

He went up 16,000 feet in the air to the point where it was cold and the air was thin. He went up way up in the air where commercial jets were spotting this man with a lawn chair and balloons up in the air. Well, he did also bring one other thing. He brought a CB radio. So he phoned in on the emergency channel on that. And this is what he said. He said, “Uh, the difficulty, uh, this was an unauthorized balloon launch. And I know I’m in federal airspace because he did, he drifted into the air. And, uh, I’m sure my ground crew has alerted the proper authority, but I just call them and tell them I’m okay.”

Well, that seems a little ill-advised, right? But he said, “Since I was 13 years old, I have dreamed of going into the clear blue sky and the weather balloon. By the grace of God, I have fulfilled my dream, but I wouldn’t do this again for anything.” The way he ultimately got down is he had his BB gun. And so he started shooting the balloons, trying to balance it out so he’d slowly lower himself down, which worked until he accidentally dropped his BB gun. But ultimately it was enough. He sunk down, got tangled in power lines, caused a two-block blackout, but managed to get off and be arrested.

He got charged initially with flying an unauthorized, uncertified aircraft. They reduced the charges somewhat, at least. It wasn’t too bad by the end. And for a brief time, he was a motivational speaker. People wanted to hear about how he had done this. And he, his motto was a man can’t just sit around. Apparently you can sit around for a long time. But he was a man of his word. He was a man of his word. He was a man of his word.

While flying around, but then people kind of forgot it. We didn’t go back up again because they’d been terrifying. And people forgot. And sadly, about 10 years later, he took his own life.

I thought about Lawn Chair Larry. He had the right idea. We can’t just sit around. We’re not here just to sit around. We’re not here to sit around at church. We’re not here to sit around at home. We’re not here to sit around and be comfortable. We’re here to do something.

Maybe for someone ingenious enough to figure out, the plan that was ill-advised and yet somewhat actually thought out—that Lawn Chair Larry did—you think, well, you know, if he’d actually listened to proper airspace authorities and learned how to pilot a plane, maybe he would have become a great commercial pilot or something, or a stunt pilot. I don’t know. I mean, if you’re willing to go up in a lawn chair, you might be…

But the key thing was to not only feel like you need to do something, but to understand you’re supposed to do something specific. Do it a specific way, be willing to listen, be willing to be guided, because otherwise you end up maybe getting a start and then drifting and sinking, both in your own experience of the journey but also in our overall trajectory. And that’s what happened to him. After that brief moment, what was his purpose? What do you do after you don’t sit but you haven’t figured out what you’re really supposed to do? What a tragedy.

So we think about what Jesus is doing as He’s instructing the people here. They’re telling them two things. One, you shouldn’t just sit around. A man, a woman cannot just sit around. You have to do something. But also He’s telling us to get hold of the proper authority first. The Lord of the Harvest is here, and He’s the one that’s going to make it work. We’re commissioned, but we’re commissioned to something specific.

And so the key thing is to say, God, show me where I’m supposed to go. If you want me up on a lawn chair strapped to weather balloons, then you know, tell me. If you want me to actually learn how to pilot a plane instead, tell me. Do you want me to go and do foreign missions? Tell me.

But here’s the thing, and this is what Lawn Chair Larry had so right: He had one part of it right. We are meant to do something.

So the answer is never will be to stand by and wait until the end when the harvest comes. The harvest is coming, and there’s something for us to do. And so the real question for each of us—and I can’t give one answer that’s true for all of us—is where can you help with the harvest this week? Not someday, right? Someday is how you never end up flying with your hot air balloon—or I guess they weren’t hot—it wasn’t hot air; your cold air balloon.

Waiting and just assuming we’re on standby is that…

Being responsive and praying like God is talking about here is something entirely different. It’s active. It’s saying, God, show me right now what I’m supposed to do next. Help me to understand. And sometimes it’s not going to feel very fruitful. It can be like putting those seeds in the ground and moving on and wondering, what in the world am I even doing this for? Why am I doing this? What am I doing?

So many of us are going to have those places where we can testify to God’s glory, and yet we don’t necessarily know what it did for anyone. Maybe not in the moment, maybe not ever.

But God has a mission for you. God has a mission for me. God has a mission for this church. God has a mission for His people.

And this week, not because I’m about to give you an end times prophecy, but the harvest has been going on these last 2,000 years. And we shouldn’t be trying to judge whether this is the last warm day or not. We should just act rightly because we’ve already been told what the season is. The season is the season of harvest.

Think about it. Every week as we’ve been in this series, we’ve sung a bit of that old gospel tune: “He’s got the whole world in His hands.”

These chapters—they spoke of how God has the whole world in His hands. That’s hope. We all know the pain and brokenness of this life, and so does everyone else around us. And they need to know there’s hope. They need to hear the harvest is here. That is good. That is joy. We have the joy. Share it.

Would you pray with me, please?

Lord, would You help us? We get tied up in the business of life, the pain of life, confusion of life. And sometimes we feel like, well, if I actually do something, I’m just going to end up 16,000 feet in the air on an ill-advised lawn chair.

But Lord, You’ve given us Your word so that we’re neither just sitting there nor floating into controlled airspace. You’re giving us Your word. You’ve invited us to come before You in prayer. You’ve given us Your Spirit that we might be guided specifically to the part of the harvest that You have passed us with. There is something for us to do.

And Lord, we do pray that today You’d help each of us to know. Maybe it’s starting with actually being one harvested if we haven’t yet believed in. And You, Lord, that You would call us now. But then don’t let us just sit there, go on standby, but understand that we too have a part. Not a part to figure out all on our own but a part to figure out being directed by the carrying hand of the farmer.

Pray this, in Jesus’ wonderful and mighty and loving name. Amen.