Why We Don’t Share Jesus More Often
I hope you’ve been enjoying this series we’ve been in called Outside the Walls where we’ve been looking at our responsibility to get outside the walls of the church.
- 2 Weeks Ago we looked at the Great Commission where Jesus tells us to Go and make disciples of all the world. I made the point that you can’t GO without leaving this building.
- Last Week we looked at how Jesus upset the Pharisees by going to a party with sinners and other scum and when Jesus was questioned about it, he said it was the sick who need a doctor. And ultimately, when we’re trying to identify who is spiritually sick and in need of Jesus – it is all of us!
- And Now Today I will conclude this series by looking at a story that challenges the way we see people all around us.
Here’s the issue we need to tackle today – many of us know that we are supposed to go and tell people about Jesus – but we simply don’t. On a day-to-day, week-to-week basis – it rarely, if ever happens. I know for some of you, this comes really easily. But for many more people, sharing your faith is not something they every do. There are a lot of reasons that might keep a person from doing this:
- The idea of evangelism is scary to a lot of Christians.
- They worry what people will think of them if they bring up Jesus.
- Or they don’t feel like they know what to say.
- Often they work up a worst-case scenario of how the other person might respond and convince themselves that it’s just not worth it.
In the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit that evangelism hasn’t come easy to me either. But for me I realized it wasn’t because I didn’t know what to say or worried they would think less of me – after all, I’m already a pastor – people expect me to talk about Jesus. No – the reason I didn’t share my faith more freely was because of a bigger heart issue inside me.
And I think the same issue that was holding me back is hiding behind these reasons so many people come up with for not sharing the good news of Jesus as often as we should. Today I want to unpack this barrier by looking at Matthew 9:35-38.
How Jesus Viewed People
As you turn there in your Bibles, this section concludes chapters 8 and 9 where Jesus is seen traveling all over preaching about the Kingdom of God and healing people of all sorts of physical needs.
And as he is traveling, he is surrounded by crowds almost constantly. In these 2 chapters, the greek word for crowds, shows up 7 times. It’s a fairly important theme Matthew makes sure to include in these chapters.
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness.
Matthew 9:35
Now I want to stop here and just point out one thing – notice how Jesus is meeting spiritual needs as well as physical needs? He is preaching the Kingdom AND healing people. Too often Christians complain that the other side isn’t doing enough XYZ. Typically the liberal side says the conservatives aren’t helping people enough and the conservative side says the liberal Christians aren’t telling anybody about Jesus. And here Jesus shows us a clear roadmap with his ministry – we can’t ONLY tell people about Jesus without meeting their physical needs NOR can we just go around helping the poor and the needy without telling them about Jesus. It’s a BOTH / AND proposition. Feed the hungry AND talk about the hope Jesus provides. Overemphasizing one to the detriment of the other misses the pattern Jesus set out for us.
And since it’s how Jesus did things, it’s how he wants all of us to live – with balance between Doing Good for those in Need and Telling people about the Kingdom. By meeting their physical needs, we earn the right to be heard. And by sharing the hope of the Kingdom, we meet their spiritual needs which are actually so much greater than their physical needs.
Back to the text, let’s look at Matt 9:36:
When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Matthew 9:36
The key to this whole passage is Jesus’ response to the crowds. When Jesus saw the crowds, the text says “he had compassion”. And that word for compassion is getting at the idea of an actual gut-wretching physical reaction to what he saw. His heart was moved. It was the type of a feeling that forces you to act.
Now why did Jesus have such an emotional response to the crowd? Because he saw it differently. He saw more than just the people standing all around him, he saw their spiritual needs. He saw how spiritually confused and helpless they were. The lead priests and the Pharisees, those tasked to be the shepherds of these people, were not guiding them toward God at all, but instead just to rules. In fact, instead of using their shepherds crook to protect the sheep, they Pharisees were essentially beating the sheep with the crook – creating rules the people could never meet. So Matthew here records how Jesus saw them like sheep without a shepherd.
This isn’t a new analogy Jesus is using to describe the Israelite people. At several points in the Old Testament, the Isrealites are described as sheep without a shepherd – each time when they lack a leader to bring them together and protect them. You see, sheep are a pretty foolish and vulnerable animal. They can easily lose their way and easily become prey to another animal. That’s why the careful care of a shepherd is so important to the survival of a sheep.
And in the same way, when God speaks of his people Israel as sheep in need of a shepherd, he is drawing these exact same conclusions about them. He is saying that without a strong leader, they lose their way and become victims to larger nations. The prophet Ezekiel, however, predicts the day when God would forever provide a Good Shepherd.
I will save my flock, and they will no longer be plundered. I will judge between one sheep and another. I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd.
Ezekiel 34:22-23
And now in the Gospel of Matthew, we see Jesus, the shepherd looking around and seeing the sheep HE is to care for all around him, harassed and helpless. And so it shouldn’t surprise us how he has such a gut-wrenching response.
But turning this verse back towards us, I think this verse shows the chasm between how Jesus responds to those around him and how we do. You see the main reason why I didn’t share my faith as freely as Jesus does – when he sees people, he sees their inner needs and HAS COMPASSION for them. When I would see people, I saw their outside – and so often the people I was around had everything together – and so I assumed WRONGLY that they didn’t need to hear about Jesus. For instance, when I would see my neighbor drive her new mini-van carrying her 2 smiling kids into her garage, I only saw her life from the outside. And on the surface, since her life seemed to be fully intact, I assumed she would have no interest in Jesus. My heart was never stirred with compassion and so my motivation to share God’s love was low.
And I don’t think I was unique – I think this is the biggest reason why so many people never share their faith. We don’t accurately discern the situation others are in. And since we don’t see the needs, we don’t feel for the people, and we don’t recognize the importance of what we have to offer them.
Really, This is the crux of the message today: How do you see people?
Are you like I was and only see the physical need (or lack of needs), or are you like Jesus and do you see that even the most-put together person is like a sheep without a shepherd if they don’t know Jesus – the One True Shepherd.
Now I know that some of you may have had experiences before where you have seen crowds of people with eyes filled with compassion like Jesus. Maybe you’ve been somewhere on a mission trip and had that moment where you were gripped with compassion for a hopeless people who had so little.
But for many of us who have had that experience, it wears off after a time. In a 3rd world country, the needs are physical and can be more clearly seen. But back in America, if we rely on our eyes to see needs, then it appears that the needs aren’t that great, and most people don’t need our help.
But I have a friend who is a missionary to the middle east. And every time he and his family come to the states and we have the chance to reconnect, I am reminded how they keep that compassion for the people God has sent them to, and so they see more than I see. When I see a put together family, they see a financially strapped family with a stressed out dad and an unsatisfied mom with kids who think they are the center of the world. They see a family who is confused and helpless, with no spiritual leader.
And it was these conversations with my friend that helped me to understand what I was missing – and why evangelism wasn’t higher on my priority list. It wasn’t because I didn’t KNOW ENOUGH, but because I didn’t CARE enough.
And this text continues to challenge me and how I see people in this next verse
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.
Matthew 9:37
I understand, as Jesus said this, he was speaking just to his disciples standing around him, a handful of people. Yup, the laborers are few. And the harvest – those crowds appeared endless so I think it was fair for Jesus to say the harvest was plentiful.
But where I jump to in my mind almost immediately is this, “Today, 2000 years after Jesus uttered this line, there seem to be more than enough workers and the harvest seems quite picked over.”
And as quickly as my mind jumps to doubting if that statement is still true to me, I realize how I am again failing to see this world the way Jesus does.
And I think I’m not alone. I think many of us fail to see the non-Christians in America as a plentiful harvest, as souls ready to turn to Jesus. Instead we only see proud, busy, self-sufficient people with cold hearts and no interest in Jesus. And we don’t feel compassion, instead we often feel a sense of indifference – thinking that they have heard about Jesus but already made their decision not to believe.
If this text stopped here, I’d have really bad news for you – my application point would be, “so work hard to see people like Jesus does. Have compassion and stop being indifferent.”
Fortunately, it doesn’t. Let’s look at the final verse.
Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.”
Matthew 9:38
So pray. Don’t DO anything. Pray. Don’t start harvesting. Don’t go running into the field all alone. Pray for more workers to join. Pray that many would join the mission to go out into the world sharing the message of Jesus and seeing lives changed. That’s Jesus’ directive to meet this great need.
I find this really interesting. Think about how often you have heard people pray for more workers compared to how often you have heard people pray for individuals who need God, or pray for “the lost‟. But Jesus already knows who’s lost – he needs people to help them find God. He needs more workers.
And the key to the prayer here is to recognize who you are praying to. This is one of the rare times Jesus doesn’t refer to God as Father, but instead He says to pray to the Lord of the Harvest. And it ends with saying that “ the workers are sent into HIS fields”. These people who don’t yet know Jesus, are part of God’s field. He is the owner of the field, all people are his. He has made people grow, he has prepared their lives for the moment you encounter them, he simply needs workers to bring in the harvest – to share the Gospel message with them!
How we Begin to See Like Jesus
So that’s what the Bible says here. It makes me realize how spiritually unaware I am, but praise God, it gives me a solution too.
For those of you who are like I was, who don’t think about talking about spiritual things because you don’t see the need and don’t see the importance – we need to pray.
We need to pray for eyes to see people like Jesus. For a spiritual discernment to see more than what people project that they want me to see. To see beyond the veneer and to see their spiritual state. To see where they are most troubled and helpless.
We need to pray for a heart of compassion. That as we see these spiritual needs, that we would no longer remain indifferent, but would break for the brokenness we see inside people. That our actions would be driven by a love we don’t even understand, but a love that speaks volumes to those we encounter. We want God to so deeply move us that we feel it in our gut – the fire burning to share Jesus with people who on the surface might seem so put together.
We need to pray for an awareness of the opportunity. We have an opportunity to see incredible life change in the lives of those we tell about Jesus. And it’s not just a once in a lifetime moment where a person responds. God’s harvest field if ripe with people ready to respond. We need workers to take advantage of the doors God opens for us.
We need to pray for the Lord of the Harvest to send out workers. We need to join the prayer of the saints through the centuries – God, send out more. Call more to go out. Challenge more people to step out of their comfort zones to share Jesus. And when we pray that prayer, we should expect to receive a prodding ourselves.
Conclusion
Can you imagine what God could do through First Baptist if we all began to pray these prayers daily? What if we kept saying to the Spirit, “Open my eyes, expose people’s needs to me, give me a heart that breaks for what I see, show me the ripened harvest around me.”
The difference between me and my missionary friends is that they have prayed for eyes that see the harvest all around and their prayer has been answered. And I want more of that for me. And I want that for you too. I want that for us as a church.
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