The Lord of the Harvest, Part One

Luke 10:1-24

After this the Lord appointed seventy-two^a others and sent them two by two ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go. ^2 He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. ^3 Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. ^4 Do not take a purse or bag or sandals; and do not greet anyone on the road.

^5 “When you enter a house, first say, ‘Peace to this house.’ ^6 If a man of peace is there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will return to you. ^7 Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages. Do not move around from house to house.

^8 “When you enter a town and are welcomed, eat what is set before you. ^9 Heal the sick who are there and tell them, ‘The kingdom of God is near you.’ ^10 But when you enter a town and are not welcomed, go into its streets and say, ^11 ‘Even the dust of your town that sticks to our feet we wipe off against you. Yet be sure of this: The kingdom of God is near.’ ^12 I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

^13 “Woe to you, Korazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. ^14 But it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. ^15 And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths.^b

^16 “He who listens to you listens to me; he who rejects you rejects me; but he who rejects me rejects him who sent me.”

^17 The seventy-two returned with joy and said, “Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.”

^18 He replied, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. ^19 I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and to overcome all the power of the enemy; nothing will harm you. ^20 However, do not rejoice that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

^21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

^22 “All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows who the Son is except the Father, and no one knows who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.”

^23 Then he turned to his disciples and said privately, “Blessed are the eyes that see what you see. ^24 For I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see but did not see it, and to hear what you hear but did not hear it.”

As I looked to the front of the church, he words were emblazoned on the enormous screen: “Quite possibly the greatest outreach in the past 2,000 years.” What was this coming event that promised such amazing results? Was it a Billy Graham crusade? Was it Jesus’ second coming? No, it was the Mel Gibson film, The Passion of the Christ. Most of you have probably seen the film. I personally recommended it and we handed out books at the Vernon Square Cinema. As powerful as it was, how did an R-rated movie filmed in Aramaic make over $600,000,000 and become the 2^nd highest R-rated money maker in the history of film? It was accomplished through what is called pyromarketing. Pyromarketing is a targeted type of marketing which is directed at specific groups as opposed to mass marketing which is sent to everyone. Gibson’s company teamed up with another company called Outreach Marketing and offered free screenings of the movie a few months before it was released. I drove to Willow Creek in Illinois to join thousands of other pastors and watched the film. Mel Gibson was also there. This same marketing technique was duplicated at a few other select locations in the U.S. Before they showed the film, they hyped the advertising by claiming it could become the greatest outreach in the last 2,000 years. As I reported a few months ago, follow-up studies have shown that the film did not make a dent in spiritual climate of our nation. It is a good, if not disturbing film about the very real suffering of Jesus, but there is no doubt the commercial success came through this targeted advertising to Christians called pyromarketing.

Rick Warren’s book The Purpose Driven Life has sold 25 million copies and holds the title of the best-selling hardcover book of all time. How did this happen? Again, targeted pyromarketing was the key. The 40 Days of Purpose, in which our church participated, was the tool by which Christians were perfectly targeted to purchase this book. I do not regret being part of the 40 Days of Purpose campaign because we understood its shortcomings and it helped boost our small group ministry, but I do regret being drawn in to this marketing campaign masterminded by Zondervan books.

Now it is happening again with the upcoming film, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Outreach Marketing, who has promoted The Passion of the Christ and the 40 Days of Purpose, has a wide variety of marketing materials related to this movie. Among other things, a church can send out oversize postcards to thousands of people and you can purchase an eight foot tall banner to put in the front of your church. Pastors and church leaders are invited to one of 140 free screenings of the film around the country. If you attend one of these, you will see new clips of the film, be given free gifts and told how your church can reach people in your area by promoting the film. In case you are not familiar with the C.S. Lewis book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is the first of seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia. The main character is Aslan the lion who is the Christ figure and the story is complete with a sacrificial death and resurrection. Is it one of my favorite books of all time and I can’t wait to see the story put on the big screen. It will be a great conversation starter with your unsaved friends and family, but our church has no plans to participate in the pyromarketing of this film.

Why am I spending so much time talking about pyromarketing? Christian movies, media and books are wonderful things. We have all benefited from them, but the problem is that for thousands of churches and millions of Christians, pyromarketing has virtually replaced genuine evangelism. Jesus said that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. In Jesus’ day, the world was literally filled with unsaved people desperately in need of a Savior. With a world population of six and a half billion, this sad fact is even more true today. But is pyromarketing the answer to a worldwide harvest of souls?

The harvest is plentiful and the workers are few. This is both good news and bad news at the same time. It is the problem and the solution rolled into one. The good news is that there is a harvest of souls waiting to be reached, but the bad news is that there are still not enough workers to reach them. The problem is that there is an unreached harvest of souls, but the solution is to pray for more workers. Do you see anything in there about pyromarketing? In Luke chapter eleven, Jesus taught us how to pray. Recall that he was not teaching about prayer, but how to pray—how to apply it to every life. This has resulted in our bold prayer initiative. In this chapter, Jesus is teaching us how to spread the gospel and reach the lost. Just like with prayer, do not think he is only teaching about evangelism—Jesus is teaching us how to evangelize. Just as many of us are being challenged to pray more effectively, so this passage will challenge us to witness more effectively.

So if pyromarketing is not the answer, what is the first step to an effective harvest of souls? First we need to see people as Jesus sees them. When Jesus looked at the people, what did he see? He saw a harvest of souls. Jesus saw a never ending garden of souls, many of which were already matured and ready to harvest. In John 4:35 he said, “Open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” Can you see it? Do you see people the way Jesus saw them? Are your spiritual eyes open to the ripened souls around you, or do see them as just more people crowding into your life?

In this passage, Jesus sent out 72 workers, but almost a year prior he sent out the twelve disciples on the same mission. Just before he commissioned them, Matthew tells us that “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” There are six and a half billion sheep aimlessly roaming the planet and most of them do not have a shepherd to lead them. Is this the way you see people? If we do not see people as Jesus does, then we need go no further. If we don’t care about the harvest, then we certainly will never pray for more workers and we most definitely will never be a worker. The first necessity is to see people as Jesus saw them—a vast harvest of helpless souls. And if you don’t, then you don’t know Jesus very well. His whole mission is to seek and to save the lost, and if we don’t share his heart, then we need to ask God to give us a heart for the lost.

This past week I was in the doctor’s office and my blood pressure skyrocketed for no apparent reason. I have always had normal blood pressure, so the doctor recommended that I purchase an automatic BP monitor and keep a log for a few days. Do you know what I concluded? These automatic BP monitors do not work very well! My point is that blood pressure is a measure or physical health. In the same way, a love for lost people is a measure of spiritual health. If you don’t have it, then something is wrong. I don’t mean that you must lie awake every nigt weeping your eyes out for lost people, but it should be a growing heart issue for us all.

The second observation is that God chooses to use workers. Put yourself in God’s shoes for a minute. You are the Creator of the cosmos. You see the vast harvest of helpless souls and instead of doing the work yourself, you enlist your sinful, earthbound sheep to bring in the harvest? Does that make any sense to you? It is kind of like asking your 3-year old to wash your fine china! It’s just not the way I would choose to do it if I were God. When he said that the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few, he genuinely saw this as a problem. He could have done all of the work himself, but he has chosen to put the work in our hands. Not the work of actual conversion, but the work of sharing Christ with others. We don’t have to fully understand it, but we must believe it—it is God’s plan that the harvest requires workers. It is a privilege to be included in his sovereign plan for the world.

Third, God may not raise up workers for the harvest unless we ask him. Once again I find the temptation to play God. Why wait for workers to pray for more workers? If I was God, I would just grab the potential workers by the shoulders, apply a good measure of Holy Spirit conviction to their hearts and send them off into the harvest field. So why make prayer a requirement for more workers? Because he wants us to know that he is the Lord of the Harvest. Even though he chooses to use us in the harvest, he does not want us to ever conclude that it is our harvest. He is the Lord of the harvest. Prayer for workers demonstrates a total dependency upon the Lord for his harvest, just as all prayer shows our dependency. He wants to give us good gifts, and a worker in the harvest is a good gift, but he also wants us to ask him.

In our prayer initiative, we are praying that God will bring many conversions, but I think we need to be even more specific in these prayers. We need to be praying for workers for the harvest so that God can bring about conversions. In other words, the harvest is limited by our prayers, so are we willing to pray for more workers? I am praying this Luke 10:2 prayer with a Free Church missionary living in Menomonee. Every week we call each other and pray a 30-second prayer in the spirit of Luke 10:2. If he is not around, I leave it on his voice mail or email it to him. I want you to know that someone from Menomonee is praying for more workers from this church. What if twenty people from our church committed to praying this prayer? Here is how you can do it. I would like at least ten people to find a prayer partner and commit to praying Luke 10:2 prayers for the next six months. Email a prayer back and forth to one another. Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into our local harvest field. I challenge twenty people to do this. Some of you already have accountability or prayer partners. Just add Luke 10:2 to your normal routine. The existing small groups can be praying Luke 10:2. The missions committee can be praying Luke 10:2. The elders need to be praying Luke 10:2. He is the Lord of the harvest and he commands us to pray for more workers.

The next principle is seen by asking a question: where will all of these workers come from? If we mobilized most of our church to become workers in the harvest, would that be enough? I don’t think so, because Jesus intends that the workers will come from the harvest and be sent back into the harvest. Look at Jesus strategy. In this chapter, Jesus sent out 72 workers, but he still wanted them to pray for more workers. Seventy-two workers was not enough. But where did the 72 come from? He started his public ministry alone. One person. He taught and eventually called 12 disciples to follow him. These same twelve were sent into the harvest field in chapter 9. About 6 months later, 72 disciples were sent out. Do you know where these 72 came from? They came from the harvest work of the original twelve. Do you see what this means? It means that the workers that we are praying for must come from the harvest. The workers are not tired, old Christians who refuse to spread the gospel, but the most effective workers are new converts from the harvest field. This is so obvious if you follow the strategy throughout the rest of the N.T. Six months after the 72 went out there were 500 disciples. Fifty days after Jesus resurrection there were 3000 disciples. A few months later there were 5000. This kind of rapid multiplication can only happen if new converts are quickly sent back into the harvest.

If this is true, then it is possible to be confused by our discipleship plan. You have seen this diagram many times. It shows how a Christian should mature over the years. As you grow in your faith, eventually you are equipped for ministry and then one day you will be able to multiply other disciples. Compared to what we just learned in Luke 10, what is wrong with this method? I think the method is Biblically sound, but too often we assume that the time from conversion to multiplication takes many years. No doubt that spiritual maturity does take many years—a lifetime in fact, but who can lead another person to Christ? Can a new Christian do this? Of course, so what happened in the early church is that new converts entered an accelerated process that took them from the harvest as a new convert and quickly released them back into the harvest as a worker. Unless this happened, there is no way the gospel would have spread so quickly. This eliminates our excuses for outreach. We can no longer say things like this—“You know, one day I will start reaching out, but I don’t feel I am ready yet.”

So what is the answer to reaching our community and the world? It is not pyromarketing, but prayer! Seeing people as Jesus saw them. Praying for more workers and then quickly releasing new converts from the harvest back into the harvest. We can’t do this last step yet because we don’t have any new converts. If God blesses us in the next eight months we will be able to test this principle, but for now we can pray. How many are willing to take up the challenge to pray this Luke 10:2 prayer?

Rich Maurer

October 16, 2005