Harvest Plenteous – Laborers Few

Driving home: I feel from the top of my head to the sole of my feet as though I have poured my very life into the labor of preaching and teaching the Word of God, especially when I've done it after teaching for four hours in the acade…

Martin describes his own experience of preaching three times on a Sunday after teaching for hours and having late meetings, to illustrate the physical and mental drain of ministry, contrasting it with Jesus' more arduous conditions.

And he did this not just on a Sabbath, but he was doing it continually, day after day. Some of the insights received from other passages, we realize that he was doing it from morning until night. Now this day and for several Lord's days, as was true last year, I'll have the privilege of ministering the word of God three times on a Lord's day in a very comfortable building. In the hot weather, it's air conditioned, it's well lit, there are no chickens cackling, there are no roosters crowing, there are no animals, there are no animals running around, there are no demon possessed people crying ou...

18:21 - 19:05 Read in full sermon

Driving home: I feel from the top of my head to the sole of my feet as though I have poured my very life into the labor of preaching and teaching the Word of God, especially when I've done it after teaching for four hours in the acade…

The mental energy required for teaching in synagogues with dialogue and hostility is compared to a lawyer defending a client without knowing the cross-examination's direction, highlighting the mental drain Jesus experienced.

When it says that our Lord went about all the cities and the villages preaching the gospel of the kingdom, we must view this as a description of His training and arduous labors. But He not only preached, He taught. And as you know, in the synagogues, the teaching ministry would often be one in which there was dialogue, in which one would have to have all the concentrated mental energy of the lawyer who is defending his client without anything but his general preparation. He doesn't know what direction the cross-examination will take, and he must marshal all of his faculties to seek to pick hol...

20:57 - 22:27 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Dear people, this is the Jesus of Holy Scripture, not the plastic Jesus who moves about like some bionic man with utterly limitless supplies of energy and strength and no felt empathy in all of these situations.

Martin contrasts a 'plastic Jesus' or 'bionic man' with limitless energy to the truly human, exhausted Jesus of Scripture, emphasizing the reality of Christ's humanity and felt empathy.

There is that other touching incident of our Lord being in the ship about to cross the lake, and in the middle of the day so utterly bone-weary that He drifts off into sleep and He goes into what the sleep experts would describe as the deepest of the three of us, of the three or four basic sleep patterns so deep that He is like a drunken man. And the slapping of the waves upon that little ship and the cracking of the sails with the unpredictable gust of wind do not disturb His rest. Even when the water breaks over the sides of that vessel and it begins to sink, it took the violent shaking of H...

25:02 - 26:27 Read in full sermon

Driving home: So that the contrast stands out in bold relief between a plentiful harvest but few workers to reap it.

A farmer with a thousand acres of ripe grain but only two laborers due to sickness illustrates the stark contrast between a plentiful harvest and a scarcity of workers, making Jesus' assessment vivid.

There is no to be verb in the original and for you Greek students by the presence of the particles men and de which are used to make a contrast on the one hand meh de but on the other hand and what our Lord says in a more literal rendering would be this then said he to his disciples on the one hand the harvest plenteous on the other hand the laborers few. So that the contrast stands out in bold relief between a plentiful harvest but few workers to reap it. It would be as though a farmer were unusually blessed on one occasion he had planted a thousand acres of grain and in the kind providence o...

32:42 - 34:10 Read in full sermon

Driving home: There are times I sit in the chair where I pray and I say O God why? What in the world can the feeble cries coming out of a mouth that maybe two hours before spoke a harsh word to my wife and had to speak words of confes…

The mystery of God consulting no creature to create worlds is contrasted with His choice to involve the 'feeble cries' of redeemed creatures in the greater work of redemption, highlighting the mystery of prayer.

And to me a mystery that's up in that stratosphere of category or category that is in the stratosphere is why the God who spoke worlds into being out of nothing never consulting the creature there were no creatures to consult only consulted himself. No creature with whom he consulted no creature who cried to him O God the universe O God speak into being a galaxy that God in the greater work of the new creation the work of redemption should come to creatures that he himself has redeemed and say your feeble cries are an integral part of what I'm going to do in my greatest work in all of eternity...

54:37 - 55:34 Read in full sermon

The point: Give the command to pray for laborers a central place in stated seasons of prayer.

Martin rejects the 'stupid unbiblical notion' of a mystical call to ministry, likening it to a 'heavenly vampire that bites us from our spiritual throat,' to emphasize the need for a more biblical understanding of God's call.

is out there somehow somewhere fashioning men and molding them and preparing them to come for a portion of his fitting of them to be true workers in preparation to thrust them out maybe we've just assumed it would happen and we've not cried to God we've not pleaded earnestly and fervently as a church and I have repented before God and I'm making my public confession before you his people and my fellow elders and I believe some structure needs to be worked into the very format of our regular meetings for prayer so that periodically we give ourselves to prayer in obedience to the Lord Jesus and ...

57:56 - 59:25 Read in full sermon