The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the tenth chapter:
After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him, two by two, into every town and place where he himself was about to go. And he said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. Go your way; behold, I am sending you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry no moneybag, no knapsack, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace be to this house!’ And if a son of peace is there, your peace will rest upon him. But if not, it will return to you. And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages. Do not go from house to house. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ But whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet we wipe off against you. Nevertheless know this, that the kingdom of God has come near.’ I tell you, it will be more bearable on that day for Sodom than for that town. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more bearable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades. “The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me.” The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name!” And he said to them, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
We talk often in the Church about the lack of pastors we’re about to head into. It’s true. There are fewer and fewer men who are preparing for the ministry. As it is now, not every pulpit is filled. Soon, unless something changes, most pulpits will remain empty. There are churches out there who will never have a pastor again. There are churches who will close their doors and never have them unlocked. There are churches whose altars will stand empty for there is no one there to administer the Sacraments.
We’re in a decline in America. The Church in this land is dying. Of all the churches that are out there, most of them spout heretical garbage that isn’t suited for a fly to land on. Most churches think they need to change things up, make themselves relevant, try to attract people by mirroring or mimicking the culture. Most churches are wrong.
There are many pastors out there who seem to be attracted to those churches because they’re growing. They are attracting more and more people. But to do that, you have to compromise the message. And when you compromise the message, you teach the people the wrong thing. And when they’re taught the wrong thing, they believe the wrong thing. And when they believe the wrong thing, well, you don’t get faithful pastors anymore.
You get hired hands, whose master isn’t God, but the devil. As pastors are less and less faithful, and as churches are less and less faithful, the people suffer under the yoke of oppression to sin. They fall into disbelief. They stop standing for the truth of God’s Word. They accept anything, as long as it doesn’t come from Scripture. They don’t bring up their boys to be men to be pastors. We’re suffering a lack of pastors in our Church here in America, and it isn’t going to be resolved any time soon.
The problem is, there are still faithful men out there who will teach God’s Word rightly and administer the Sacraments properly. But they don’t get a lot of play in the culture or even in the Church. They work diligently to make sure the Word they bring is God’s Word, and that’s just not attractive. The Gospel isn’t attractive to people. It just isn’t. Jesus says it’s a stumbling block. It’s a rock that will crush people. It will shatter them to bits. As Christians, we have a hard time understanding this because we love the Gospel, we love the Good News, we love that we are forgiven sinners under the banner of Christ. We’ve been so happy that we’ve been set free that we forget what it’s like when the rest of the world hears the message of Jesus Christ.
That message, the one Jesus sent the 72 out to preach, is one of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. It’s one that tells people that they must leave behind their wicked ways and turn to God for forgiveness. It tells people that they aren’t good enough. It tells them they can’t do it on their own. It tells people they can’t earn their way to salvation. It tells them God won’t let them into heaven because they’re basically good. It tells them that there is no balance of justice, and even if there were, all the good you do in this life adds up to nothing.
This is not a popular message to preach. And it must be preached. It must even be preached to you, the Church, every week. We get complacent with our lives. We get to thinking that everything is just fine. But we forget that our whole lives are to be conformed to Christ’s and our mind transformed by the working of His Spirit. And when we forget that, we become secure in our sin. It takes faithful pastors to remind you that this is not okay, this is not good. It takes these faithful men everything they have to call a person or people out on their sin and lead them to repentance.
When that repentance comes, it is the joy of a pastor to forgive the sins of those who are despairing. It is pure joy to say on behalf of Christ, I forgive you. We do it corporately, like we’ve done this morning, and we do it privately, though private, individual confession (which barely anyone ever avails themselves of anymore, but it’s available nonetheless). To get to that point though, the world is almost always unwilling to hear the Law. To get the Gospel, you must first have the Law, and the world hates the Law of God.
Do you hate the Law? We’d, of course, say no, but it’s something to think about. I think we all hate it, or, at the very least, want to ignore it, when it’s inconvenient to our purposes. We like to gossip about others to feel good. We like to linger on the nubile body of a young woman. We like to feel titillated at the most recent romance novel. We like to slander and lie. We like to covet what others have. We even like to skip church. But, presumably, you know this about yourself. And, presumably, you want to stop these things from happening and you’re working on it. You’re working on it because you know you are a child of the King, and your behavior reflects upon Him. Whether you’re a liar or a thief doesn’t change your status as a child, unless, of course, you reject Him, but it does reflect on Him. And I can tell you, if you’ve come here, in the Spirit of God, seeking forgiveness for your sins, you are forgiven. Christ shed His blood and died to forgive that sin you’re worried about. He has cast it away from you. It is yours no more.
But, see, this isn’t a popular message. And there aren’t going to be a lot of pastors to preach it, neither right now, men who have the courage to do so, or in the future, when there may be no one left to do so. So, Jesus tells us to pray that God would raise up workers, laborers for the harvest, men to be pastors to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ. We pray earnestly for them, and diligently for them, otherwise the day may come when we lay on our deathbed and there is no pastor to come to forgive us, to sing to us, to pray for us. It’s just a person belonging to the latest craze of Wicca or pop-psychology or whatever. And they’ll just tell you this is natural and pump you so full of drugs that you just die quietly, but without the cross of Christ before your eyes.
Pray for the workers of the harvest, and work it yourself. You may not be a pastor, but you can still tell others about Jesus. You can still bring them to the Church. You can still bring others in to hear the Good News, to be baptized, to receive the Supper, to be forgiven, even to, perhaps, begin to desire the good work of the pastor.
Know this work is going to be hard. But, take comfort, Jesus knows this. Jesus is abundantly clear about this. He knows people will reject Him. If, in your work, you come across a people who will not accept the Gospel, you shake off the dust from your feet at them. That’s basically a way of telling people that the judgment of God is against them; from dust they came and from dust they shall return. You don’t compromise your message to reach people. The Gospel of Jesus Christ that you bring to those in need is accepted on its face or it isn’t. It’s embraced or it isn’t. It’s welcomed or it isn’t. You don’t shape it to fit the people’s felt needs. You preach it, just as Jesus gave it.
It sounds harsh, I know, but it is how our Lord said it would be. If they hear you, they hear the Lord. If they reject you, they reject the Lord. It doesn’t mean it’s okay to be a jerk and then people reject you. You bring the message of Jesus Christ. Be winsome, be charming, or at least as charming as you’re able. But bring the message of Christ. It’s the only thing that matters, because it’s the only thing that will save a person into eternal life.
Pray for the workers of the harvest, pray that they come to the Lord’s Church, and they will. When you pray, when you preach, you carry the authority of Christ Himself. He will do it, in His time. We pray it’s soon, whether it’s here in America, or all over the world, where people are being converted by the thousands daily. God is answering that prayer, and providing workers, even if we may not see it with our own eyes. And through your prayers, through your good work, someone, somewhere will turn. It happens. Jesus sees to that. It’s like Satan falling from heaven when he’s cast out of a person. It’s an exorcism of a real kind when the evil spirit departs and the Holy Spirit takes root. Whether or not you think you’ve made a difference, you have. You preached the Gospel. That’s always a good thing. And you’ve been faithful. That’s always an amazing thing. And your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, so rejoice. It’s not written there because you preach the Gospel, but because you’ve been saved, forgiven, set free from sin by the blood of Jesus. In His name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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