LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1989, Page 80

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80 LIFELIGHT BIBLE STUDY

fields of Kansas. When there’s corn and oats and barley,
they see the need, the urgency to get out and harvest it.

The harvest. Oh, how we've been exposed to that har-
vest here by Dr. Nelson Unwene and Pastor Wynn Nguyen
and many others. That has been pressing itself upon my
heart in the last months. About a year ago Concordia Pub-
lishing House was asked to assume responsibility for eth-
nic resources, and Rev. Carlos Puig came to join us at CPH.
Since that time I’ve been traveling with Carlos around the
country, visiting with Hispanics, with Mandarin and Can-
tonese-speaking Chinese pastors out west, with Koreans,
Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Hmong, also North
American Indian peoples, and many black ministry lead-
ers. I think about the harvest in our own lands and beyond.
After visiting a Buddhist temple in Hacienda Heights, Cal-
ifornia, I pondered about the impact of that non-Christian
religion right in our back yard.

The harvest also includes our own neighborhood
whether or not there are many ethnic groups present. I
remember vividly my ministry in Peru, IN, where an Air
Force major about to be transferred heard the Gospel in
my adult information class, along with a single parent with
five children needing much help, or ministering to a
woman, recently having embezzled some funds, on her way
to the state prison. The harvest is plentiful, but the work-
ers are few.

Thank God. We do need more pastors, and we thank
God for Concordia Seminary’s 150th anniversary of pre-
paring pastors. We do need pastors and other church
professionals who are compassionate, who are saturated
in the Gospel, and who have that vision of the harvest and
want to, with God’s grace, bind up wounds. But we also
need harvest workers from the whole people of God, brick-
layers and commercial bankers, university professors and
computer technicians, teachers and government officials.
The list goes on and on. Workers to go out into that harvest.
But here Jesus says “pray.” “Ask the Lord of the harvest
to send forth laborers” with the implication you may well
be tapped on the shoulder to go yourself. Pray, and go.

Yes, in these few short verses we have a compassionate
Jesus, preaching, teaching, and healing to the harassed
and helpless crowds like sheep without a shepherd. We
have Him coming to us, asking us to pray for the harvest
and for workers prepared to go: “Hark, the voice of Jesus
calling, / ‘Who will go and work today? / Fields are white
and harvest waiting, / Who will bear the sheaves away?’?/
Loud and long the master calls you, / Rich reward he offers
free. / Who will answer, gladly saying, / ‘Here am I, send
me, send me”? ”

Bible Study 2
Sending the Disciples

Let’s pray: Lord of the harvest, send workers out into
your harvest. Amen.

I pray because He asked me to, my master. I follow Him.
And what a mission He has. He teaches in the syn-
agogues—and how boldly. He proclaims the kingdom of
heaven at hand. He preaches. And He heals all manner of
diseases,

I hear and I’ve observed. He’s opened my eyes to see
the crowds in a new way, harassed and helpless, like sheep
without a shepherd, and to look around to see the harvest.
Of course, when He asks me to, PU pray for workers in the
harvest. But what’s this? He’s calling us together to sur-
round Him, and He’s sending me on His mission? How can
that be? I’m not like He is. Praying is one thing, but going
is another.

Who am I? I’m Simon, who is called Peter. I’m Bartho-
lomew. I’m Thaddaeus. I’m a no-name. I’m a fisherman, a
tax collector, a zealot—not too happy with the Romans.
But an ambassador sent out, how can that. be?

Pray with me. Lord of the harvest, send out workers
into the harvest. I’m willing to pray that because I follow
Him. And what a mission He has: teaching, preaching, and
healing all manner of hurts. He’s opened my eyes to see—
to see the crowds, the world, their problems. They're like
sheep without a shepherd. I’m more than willing to pray.
Pll take part in mission celebrations, and I'll even walk
forward and place my offerings in the box. I will read a
convention book of reports and memorials, and I will vote
on resolutions, but what’s this? He’s calling us together
around Him, and He’s sending us on His mission. How can
that be?

Who am I? I’m a Missouri Synod Lutheran pastor. ’m
a teacher. I’m a deaconess. I’m a layperson. A no-name.
Listen for His instructions, because it says in the first verse
of chapter 10: “He called his twelve disciples to him and
gave them authority.” His authority stands behind it all.
The crowds were amazed at His teaching because He
taught as one having authority and not as the teachers of
the Law. A centurion, a man under authority, recognized
His greater authority and said “only say the word, and my
servant will be healed.” The paralytic is brought forward
and Jesus heals him so that everyone might know that
“the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.”
And with that tiny band of followers, ready to be given a
great commission, He says “all power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth.”

The disciples, the apostles as they’re called here only in
Matthew, have a special role never to be repeated. Built
on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, we also as
pastors and laypeople, have the authority of His word of
forgiveness, and so we can listen. And we want to listen.
This is field work. This is continuing education. We’re
being sent, no academic matter. We want to listen because
we're going to be out there on the firing line.

And He starts out, “do not g0 among the Gentiles or
enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost
sheep of Israel,” a clearly focused mission. At this time,
not the Samaritans, not the Gentiles, but there are plenty
of lost sheep in those villages to be reached.

I might add parenthetically that we still have a mission
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ’m very thankful
for our Jewish evangelism effort and for people like Milton
Kohut out in California that I’ve worked with, devoted to
reaching out to Jewish people with the Messiah who has
come.

Our mission, too, needs a clear focus in our backyard,
in our families, in our churches and communities, and in