The Messengers of the King (Podcast)

The Messengers of the King Podcast by Dr, Pastor John MacArthur for Grace to You

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With great joy this morning we come to the 10th chapter of Matthew. In our ongoing study of this marvelous, thrilling account of our Lord’s life and ministry, we find ourselves beginning a new section, a new dimension, as we enter the 10th chapter. This chapter is marked in the first verse by the calling and the commissioning of the disciples. And then in the second verse they are sent as apostles. It is a change in the pattern of ministry for our Lord, it is a critical part of the training of the twelve. It is a new phase in Matthew’s presentation of the work of the King Himself. And I really believe as we go through this 10th chapter we’re going to learn so much about discipleship, so much about what our Lord did, what He taught as He trained the men who would carry the baton after He gave it to them. And I believe that as you and I together go through this chapter our lives are going to be dramatically affected, as it touches us in regard to our service rendered to Jesus Christ.

Now remember from our last study together that our blessed Lord saw Israel, and surely the whole world as a vast field to be harvested. That’s why in verse 37 He said, “The harvest is plenteous.” Everybody is involved. He could see the multitude coming to Him and then as He looked at that multitude it stretched across the world and He could see all men as a field to be harvested. And as we shared with you the harvest is judgment. Jesus saw them in light of the inevitability of judgment, the inevitability of coming doom, the inevitability, the inexorable moving toward hell. They were grain, either to be burned or to be barned, to be gathered in or to be cast out. And they had been betrayed by their shepherds, who were false shepherds, who had mangled them and mauled them and mutilated them and left them for dead. And when Jesus saw people that way He was moved with compassion, it says in verse 36. Literally He felt their pain, He suffered, He hurt down deep as He Himself experienced their agony. And out of that He calls on His disciples, in verse 38 and asks them to pray, and He asks them to pray that God will send forth laborers. Because it is clear that He Himself can’t do it, and so we enter a new dimension in the gospel of Matthew as the Lord begins to add to His own ministry these twelve men who can increase the potential for reaching the field that inevitability is to be harvested. So the Lord asks them to pray.