1Reprinted with editing from Christ Setting His Face Towards Jerusalem, a collection of sermons on passages in Luke’s Gospel. When the book was published, Wilson (1808-1888) had retired from St Paul’s Free Church, Dundee. Previous sermons of his which were reprinted in this Magazine were first published when he was a minister in Carmylie, in Angus.
Luke 10:1,2. After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before His face into every city and place, whither He Himself would come. Therefore said He unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth labourers into His harvest.
In spite of the various discouragements which Jesus experienced in His work, He continued to prosecute it. Indeed these discouragements and hindrances made even clearer the need of completing that work on which He had set His heart. The whole world was lying in wickedness, at enmity with God, spiritually dead. The Samaritans to whom He had turned aside refused to receive Him. Those who offered to follow Him were doing so under false pretences, with a view to gratifying their carnal desires, and those whom He earnestly invited to follow Him had something else, of more immediate concern, to attend to.
His time on earth, moreover, was short – a few months now would bring Him to the end of His personal ministry in the world. And the people, meanwhile, were perishing in ignorance. There was need of labourers for the harvest which it was His purpose to reap. He could not be personally present everywhere, and devote the time needed for impressing on men the message of which He was the bearer. His work must therefore be done, in part at least, by the instrumentality of others.
At an earlier period of His ministry He had sent forth 12 disciples to preach the gospel of the kingdom. Now He appointed 70 to engage in the same gracious, yet most difficult and dangerous, work. He had in some measure quickened the souls of these His earnest followers to apprehend the nature of His mission and the issues that depended on it, and He sent them forth as His ambassadors and heralds. Their commission was indeed limited and temporary, and thus very different to the great commission He gave after His resurrection.
If we are to find any special significance in the appointment of the seventy, I believe we shall discover it in relation to the Jewish Sanhedrin, the supreme council of the nation, which determined all causes relating to Jewish faith and worship. They sat in Moses’ seat and had corrupted the high office which they held. They were the last representatives of legislative power in the Jewish Commonwealth. But Jesus had come to establish a spiritual kingdom, of which such men were not the fitting rulers; they would have been unjust judges.
His kingdom, moreover, was to be complete in itself. It was to have a perfect organisation and administration of laws. In it would be found all laws relating to divine worship, and to the observance of divine ordinances. It was to take the place of all that had been foreshadowed by Jewish institutions. Jesus had, not long before, been instructing His disciples about this great fact. He had been laying the foundations of His kingdom, showing the manner in which causes were to be tried, and the divine authority that would accompany the judgements of the Church’s tribunals. Now, in appointing the seventy, it is possible He might be indicating the near-dissolution of the Sanhedrin’s supreme authority, and the substitution for it, in the Christian Church, of a purer law and a more perfect administration.
But surely it is not necessary that we should search for any special meaning in the appointment of the seventy, beyond the indication which the fact afforded of the pressing necessity for men to hear the news of the kingdom. Jesus had compassion on the multitude, who were perishing for lack of knowledge in enmity against God, and He sent forth this numerous band to warn them and to prepare them for His dealing with them personally. He sent them two by two, for the work they had to do was difficult and dispiriting. He would therefore not leave them to sustain the burden of it alone. He would have them to go in company to strengthen each other’s hands, to bear one another’s burdens, and be helpers of one another’s joys. It was a work which would have prostrated any spirit other than His own and, in doing it, He would not separate His disciples from all Christian counsel and sympathy. It was a wise and gracious appointment, to which the Church has given too little heed in sending forth her missionaries. In this work it will always be found eminently true that two are better than one.
Jesus sent the seventy forth as reapers to the harvest and, in so sending them, He would have them first of all to apprehend the urgent and immediate need of their labour. They must prosecute it with all diligence and without delay. He compared the multitudes of the people to the ripened crops in the field inviting the hand of the reaper. This figure of speech was specially calculated to impress, on the minds of those whom He sent forth, the great urgency of their work. Here were fields rich with abundant grain, fields already white unto the harvest, while there was as yet no hand to gather the precious fruit. The treasures of golden grain were in danger of rotting in the ground. This then was the state of the case: these multitudes who were scattered abroad with no one to care for their souls, and who must perish if salvation was not brought to them, needed to be instantly sought and gathered, as men hasten to reap the fields which are white unto the harvest.
It is evident that the argument which Jesus employed in the text suits every period in the history of the Church. It is an argument which presses upon us now, as urgently as it did when Jesus was ministering among men. We have still the ripened fields all around us, and the labourers are few. Primarily the labourers in the harvest are ministers of the gospel. The figure employed in the text can be understood and appreciated in every land, and through all ages, so long as seedtime and harvest shall endure. It is a figure which speaks to men’s worldly experience and anxieties.
Who has not witnessed the eager business of the harvest field, and how the season brings into employment the young and the old, the idle and the toil-worn? Those seasons when the fields become generally white at the same time, when there is promise of a plenteous harvest, and when there are not enough reapers to cut down the laden grain, what busy activity there is and how many anxious thoughts! Labourers are sought near and far, and none are found standing idle in the market. Those who, from their youth or old age, are well nigh unfit for all other employment, are called to engage in this. Nor is all this care and haste out of proportion to the necessities of the case. Food for man and beast for the year to come depends on this work being done, and hence this busy toil, the eager enquiry for labourers, and the willingness to accept those of every kind who may present themselves.
But, alas, how disproportioned this activity and care about an earthly provision is to the anxiety and energy which even the best of men manifest for a spiritual and heavenly provision, as if it was more important to gather in the precious fruits of the earth than to gather in precious souls to God. It would indeed be a melancholy spectacle to witness the rich fields white for harvest, and the precious crops rotting on the ground, because there were no hands to reap it – as might conceivably happen by the prevalence of some widespread and desolating pestilence, when men were enfeebled by disease, and multitudes made the prey of death. And it is just such a disaster which has brought it about that the spiritual harvest is not reaped. There is a moral pestilence which is year by year hurrying multitudes into eternity, and which has so paralysed the energies of those who survive, that it is just as true now as when Jesus said it, that the labourers are few and the harvest is not reaped, although there are great multitudes whose spiritual necessities urgently claim the earnest and united labours of all hands.
To remedy this great evil, Jesus instructed His disciples to pray to the Lord of the harvest. This was indicated to them as the grand instrument whereby that evil which excited His tender compassion might be effectually and permanently removed. And the same instruction is now given to us who profess to be disciples of Christ. The same instrument is put into our hands which they were told to use, if only we will consent to employ it. It is the most effective of all instruments, and if it is not used, every other kind of agency will be in vain. The Lord has ordained prayer as the medium through which, and in answer to which, every spiritual blessing may be obtained.
If a personal need is felt, it may be supplied by prayer. If a soul is hungering and thirsting after righteousness, it will be filled abundantly in answer to prayer. If there is desolation on the earth, by means of prayer the wilderness and solitary place will be made glad, and the desert will rejoice and blossom as the rose. If there is deadness and unfaithfulness in the Church, in answer to prayer the Lord will clothe the daughter of Zion with her beautiful garments, and restore her to glory and strength. The command is, “Ask”; and the promise is, “Ye shall receive”. “Seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.
The Lord would have people realise their entire and absolute dependence upon himself, and He has therefore enjoined them to pray. And He has enforced the discharge of this duty by various promises and encouragements. We are, as it were, under a double obligation to pray: on the one hand because the Lord has enjoined it; and on the other hand by the abundant blessings attendant upon it. For all things, God will be enquired of by His people to do it for them. He has established it as a law in the administration of the kingdom of grace that to prayer – fervent, united, persevering prayer – all things shall be granted; and that, without prayer, all effort and labour and agency will not only be unavailing but, in vindication of His own glory, He will manifest Himself in judgement against every work so undertaken.
Consider then what a mighty privilege God has bestowed upon us. He has put into our hands a weapon whereby we may subdue all things. Heaven and earth are moved by prayer; it is the lever which raises and sustains the whole spiritual world. It brings from on high resistless influences. God bends down to hear it, and His arm executes its requests. It can accomplish miracles. It removes mountains and overcomes all difficulties. Pray ye the Lord of the harvest, and He will remove all obstacles in the way of reaping it.
But let us attend more particularly to the injunction contained in the text. It contains much profitable instruction. It is a command to pray that God would send labourers into His harvest. The harvest is His, and its reapers must be sent by God. There may be labourers in this harvest whom God does not send, and whom therefore He will not bless, and hence the need of the prayer. At the time when this injunction was given there was no lack of labourers among the Jews. The priests and Levites were still in the land. There were many learned scribes and saintly Pharisees. There were synagogues in every village, with presidents and elders to instruct those who resorted to them. Whence then the complaint that, though the harvest was plenteous, the labourers were few? There were labourers enough, but the people were really destitute, for God had not sent the labourers and their work was unblessed.
What the text therefore enjoins, first of all, is that we should pray for the purity of the Church, that ministers of the gospel would be divinely commissioned, and that they would preach a pure gospel. This was not the state of things among the Jews. Their teachers did not enter heaven themselves and they closed its gates against those who sought to enter in. This was not a new thing among them. In the days of their fathers the same thing had happened because, as was explicitly declared, the people had hard, unbelieving hearts. They had lying prophets, dumb dogs, because they loved to have it so.
Let us remember this fact when we consider our own duties in relation to this matter. In our own land and in our own day, many matters press upon us the obligation to pray that God would send forth labourers into His harvest. It is to be expected that when a Church enjoys outward prosperity, and worldly favour, those who have no divine call to the work will seek to minister in her high places. And, alas, how manifestly true it is that many who are engaged in this ministry have no earnest desire to reap the harvest of souls. By their works they are known. It is very sad to think of the multitudes of ignorant heathen who are as sheep without a shepherd; but it is perhaps sadder still to see a people who, as the Jews were, are being fed, but not with the bread of life – deceived by those who should guide them in the right way, and betrayed by those who, under the most sacred obligations, are bound to defend them.
But if we would pray for a reformation that would result in all pastors being faithful, we must have our eye also on the source of this great evil. Let us ask ourselves how, under the loving sway of the great Head of the Church, there should be false and faithless teachers who do not feed the flock or give them wholesome food. It is well that such pastors should be denounced; but why has the supreme Lord of all lords allowed them access to His Church? How did it happen that those who sat in Moses’ seat during the personal ministry of Jesus were false and faithless? The Word of the Lord declares that it was just because the people loved to have it so. And we can hardly doubt that the primary cause of the same fact among ourselves is just the carelessness, unbelief and faithlessness of the members of the Church.
Yet it is common enough to overlook the cause and merely denounce the fact. It is obvious that, where there are careless pastors, there will generally be careless flocks, and hence the evil is, naturally enough, attributed wholly to the heedless, faithless pastor. But this is not the whole evil, however much it is to be deplored and however necessary to pray for its removal. It is very frequently the result of another evil for which you should mourn and be in bitterness. When the pastors of a Church are found corrupt and slothful, the radical cause may generally be traced to spiritual declension among the people; and if the evil is to be remedied, it behoves you to pray for a revival and for the grace of repentance. I would by no means palliate the guilt of faithless ministers. No doubt they have a fearful account to render. But it is surely worth your while to enquire if such a sad condition of the Church is the result of your own carelessness and of restraining prayer that the Lord would send forth labourers into His harvest.
I believe it to be well-nigh impossible for a minister to sustain his energy and faithfulness among an unbelieving and prayerless people. And your prayers should be unceasingly offered for this end: that ministers may be made diligent and skillful reapers. Doubtless, in answer to such prayers, ministers would go forth among the people, both in the public services of the sanctuary and in their ministry from house to house, with such an unction from the Holy One as would repay you sevenfold, in the edification of your own souls and in winning to Christ the wayward and the unbelieving. The ointment poured upon the head of the High Priest would then descend even to the skirts of His garments. The whole body would have a saviour of Christ, and each member of it would be blessed in Him.
But we are evidently enjoined in the text to pray for the extension of the Church as well as for its purity, not only that the labourers in the field would be men sent of God, but that such labourers would be greatly multiplied. This is an obligation which Jesus lays upon all who love His cause. It is implied in that form of prayer which He taught his disciples. It is a duty which is often enjoined, because it is a duty which we are prone to forget. Such neglect indeed indicates the presence of a worldly spirit.
A worldly man values the things of this world very much in proportion to his exclusive possession of them. He has no desire that others should share them. Titles of dignity are highly valued because they are rare, and wealth is valued, not merely because of the luxuries it can command, but because to possess it is not common. But the spirit of Christ is the very opposite of this. The Christian has the highest of all dignities, for he is a son of God, but the earnest desire of his heart is that every human being should also share it. He is the heir of the richest inheritance, but so far from desiring exclusive possession of it, his most ardent wish is that all men might be fellow-heirs with him. Just in so far as he is personally adorned with the graces which Jesus imparts, he desires to see everyone similarly arrayed. He delights as much in imparting as in receiving, and so he prays the Lord of the harvest to send forth labourers into His harvest.
Our text leads us to contemplate missionaries and mission enterprises as matters for prayer. We are obliged to pray that missionaries may be men really sent of God, and devoted to His service – men who, amid all trials and discouragements, may be endowed with wisdom and power to fight the battle of the Lord. And we are obliged to pray for an increase of such labourers, because it is still true that, while the harvest is plenteous, the labourers are few. What are all the missionaries we send among so many who do not know the way of salvation? The prayer that the Lord would send forth labourers into His harvest has by no means been fully answered yet. Has the Church been earnest in uttering it? Is not the present aspect of the world in large measure due to the fact that prayer for its conversion has been so much neglected? The Church needs stronger faith and more of the spirit of supplication that God would put it into the hearts of men to consecrate their lives to mission work. It needs also to unclasp the hand of covetousness and open the selfish heart, so that the means might be provided for sending forth more missionaries.
If the injunction of our text were heartily complied with, the obligation to employ all the means within our reach, for accomplishing the aim of our prayer, would be felt more widely and deeply. The fact that we pray the Lord to do any work, acknowledging thereby that the work is His, binds us personally to strain every nerve for its accomplishment. God honours us to be fellow workers with Him in those things He enjoins us to pray for. He could accomplish His purpose without our prayers and without the use of our agency and substance. But it is not His method so to act. In wisdom and loving-kindness He calls us to come to His help. It is best for us that our hearts should be inflamed with zeal for the establishment of His kingdom, and that we should be actively engaged in promoting its interests.
And if we had the mind which was in Jesus, this would be the manner of our life. He knew no weariness in this work and labour of love. He brought glad news to men, and His heart burned to communicate them. He was without a home, He was a pilgrim, passing from one place to another to proclaim His message. His pre-eminent desire was to save sinners. Whatever He did or said had this end in view. Is this the spirit which animates us? What are we doing to accomplish the object which so engrossed His life? Do we make it manifest by our deeds that we really are His followers and disciples? Are we earnestly and steadfastly working for that which lay so near His heart? If not, what are we? Do we not deceive ourselves in professing to be Christians?