Lord of the Harvest (1993)

In this part of the sermon: Martin begins expounding Matthew 9:35-38, first focusing on Jesus's constant, physically and emotionally draining work of teaching, preaching, and healing across cities and…

Martin contrasts his own arduous 'marathon weekends' of preaching and teaching in comfortable, controlled environments with Jesus's continuous, physically demanding, open-air ministry in hostile, distracting settings, to highlight the draining nature of Jesus's labors.

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 running around, there are no demon-possessed people crying out. I have the assistance of a microphone that takes my voice and projects it to the back row and

18:30 - 19:13 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But dear people, we mistake the nature of our Lord's humanity. If we read a passage like this and think that Jesus just tripped around from city to village, preached a bit here and taught a bit there, and healed some her…

He compares Jesus's teaching in synagogues, often involving dialogue and hostility, to a lawyer defending a client under cross-examination, requiring intense mental energy and emotional drain, to illustrate the mental exhaustion Jesus experienced.

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 holes in the arguments or in the evidence presented by the other attorney and by the other witnesses. And our Lord in these synagogue situations would know something of that

21:15 - 22:00 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But dear people, we mistake the nature of our Lord's humanity. If we read a passage like this and think that Jesus just tripped around from city to village, preached a bit here and taught a bit there, and healed some her…

Cited as an example of virtue (power) going out of Jesus during healing, suggesting His empathetic engagement with suffering was physically and emotionally taxing.

entered into the maladies of those whom He would heal. He entered in empathetically to broken and to scarred humanity. And though I cannot pretend to explain precisely what is meant, you remember that when that woman touched the hem of His garment in faith and was healed, Jesus said, Who touched me? I perceive that virtue has gone out of me.

23:04 - 23:34 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But dear people, we mistake the nature of our Lord's humanity. If we read a passage like this and think that Jesus just tripped around from city to village, preached a bit here and taught a bit there, and healed some her…

Examples of Jesus sighing before healing a deaf man and groaning/shuddering at Lazarus's tomb are used to show His deep emotional engagement and the volcanic eruption of His being in the presence of suffering and death.

There was something that when Jesus came out of the Son of God in His healing ministry, we read of Him on one occasion sighing as He is about to open the ears of a deaf man. We find Him on other occasions deeply agitated in the presence of the body of Lazarus that has already begun to decay. And a verb is used to describe Jesus both groaning and shuddering in the very depths of His being. There was a volcanic eruption in the presence of death, even though He came as death's conqueror and would soon say,

23:34 - 24:17 Read in full sermon

Driving home: But dear people, we mistake the nature of our Lord's humanity. If we read a passage like this and think that Jesus just tripped around from city to village, preached a bit here and taught a bit there, and healed some her…

The account of Jesus sleeping so deeply in the boat during a storm that He was undisturbed by waves and only awakened by violent shaking, illustrates His utter bone-weariness and exhaustion.

are not reticent to give us pictures of that exhaustion. In John 4 we read, at midday He was weary with His journey, and He sat by a well. 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 or four basic sleep patterns so deep that He's 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,

24:51 - 25:35 Read in full sermon

Driving home: There's a very real sense in which this sober assessment expressed by the Lord Jesus is true in every generation. To anyone who has eyes to see reality, spiritual reality exists.

An analogy of a farmer with a thousand acres of ripe grain but only two laborers is used to vividly illustrate the disparity Jesus describes: a plentiful harvest with a scarcity of workers.

out in bold relief between a plentiful harvest of 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 of God, the combination of the harvest and the laborers at that time, the combination of rain and sun and humidity, brought an optimum crop.

33:23 - 33:51 Read in full sermon

Driving home: 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 et…

A quote from 'one man of God' stating that every biblical doctrine eventually explodes in mystery is used to introduce the profound mystery of God ordaining human prayer as integral to His work.

As it is clear that God alone can equip and send forth the laborers, it is equally clear that he's ordained our prayers as an integral part of his working, as an integral part of his working. Now, that to me is one of the greatest mysteries of biblical revelation. There are many mysteries. One man of God said, and I shall never forget it, he said, there is no biblical doctrine which, if you do not trace it upward far enough, will eventually explode in mystery.

52:48 - 53:20 Read in full sermon

Driving home: 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 et…

The incarnation (God and man in one person, God dying, Christ saying 'before Abraham was, I am') is given as an example of a profound biblical mystery.

It will explode in mystery. Think of the mystery of the incarnation. How can God? God and man exist in one person, yet two distinct, unmixed natures, yet one integrated person, two distinct natures, so that God does not die, and yet we are said to be purchased with the blood of God.

53:22 - 53:44 Read in full sermon

Driving home: 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 et…

The imputation of sin to Christ ('made sin for us' yet holy) is given as another example of a profound biblical mystery.

True man. Yet the man Christ Jesus says before Abraham was, I am. The mystery of the incarnation. The mystery of imputed sin.

53:47 - 54:00 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray at family altars for sons to be called as laborers and for daughters to be godly helpers to men of God.

Martin uses the metaphor of a 'celestial vampire' biting one's spiritual throat to describe and reject a subjective, mystical, unbiblical notion of the call to ministry.

There is nothing wrong with that and I'm not reverting to this silly notion that a seven or eight year old kid can know he's called to the ministry because he's felt the flutter of the call in his left ventricle in the middle of the night. It's an unbiblical notion of wretched subjectivism that the call comes mystically as some heavenly value. It's a vampire that bites us on our spiritual throat and leaves marks that only we can see. And if anyone dares question that this celestial vampire has come and bitten us, we'll be unto them.

59:20 - 59:56 Read in full sermon

The point: Pray at family altars for sons to be called as laborers and for daughters to be godly helpers to men of God.

Martin shares a personal anecdote about his son-in-law, a minister, expressing how invaluable his daughter (Martin's daughter) is as a godly wife and helper in ministry, illustrating the importance of praying for godly spouses for ministers.

Lay your hand upon my daughters and make them into men, a women worthy and competent to stand by a man of God and to be a helper answering to his unique needs. And there are several of us as fathers who feel that perhaps the greatest contribution we've made is to give some man of God, a man of God, a godly wife. Amidst many of the pains and griefs that my wife and I have known as parents, we have a singular joy when I meet with my son-in-law who is in the ministry and ask him very frank questions about my daughter, which I, as a father, have a right to ask.

60:39 - 61:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Embrace the solemn duty to pray with renewed intensity and sustained persistence for the Lord of the harvest to send forth workers.

Martin compares his joy in hearing tapes of former Academy students preaching to Simeon's prayer ('Lord, now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation'), expressing gratitude for seeing the fruit of the Academy's labors.

My friend, this summer some of us have been privileged to hear the fruit of our labors and I have felt like old Simeon. I've played the tapes. I'm not quite through all the tapes of the preachers who formerly were academy students who ministered to you this summer and I tell you as I've listened to those men my heart is burned within me and I said, oh God, there's another worker full with his sickles of a reap in your heart and I say the prayer of Simeon has been on my lips more than once now Lord let thy servant depart in peace mine eyes have seen my salvation having wondered for years will t...

66:56 - 67:41 Read in full sermon