People need the Lord

Matthew 9:36-38 (NASB)

Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”

When you think of Jesus what descriptions come to mind immediately?  Love?  Mercy?  Compassion?  I am reminded of a very beautiful segment of the old (1961) movie “King of Kings” where Jesus is performing all kinds of healing miracles.  In one scene a blind man who is using a stick along a wall to guide him comes into the shadow of Jesus. The camera shows his eyes without color, then as the beautiful theme music (by Miklos Rozsa, composer also of the music for “Ben Hur”) becomes louder, you see the blind man’s eyes turn to a deep blue and he can see again.  Then the camera turns to Jesus’ face and you see a face filled with love, mercy, and compassion.  That’s the image I love to think about when I think of the person of Jesus.  And it is that image that is portrayed in these verses from Matthew. 

Jesus saw the crowd, the multitudes of people and was moved with compassion. The Greek word translated as “compassion” here and in eleven other verses in the gospels (or some translations use the phrase “felt sorry for”) means literally “to be moved as to one’s bowels”.  That does not seem right, but bowels are all our inward parts and Scripturally bowels mean the same as heart.  As someone once said, it would not be right to say to someone, “I love you with all my bowels (!)”, but again, in Scripture, bowels are the same as the heart.  Jesus was moved to the deepest part of His being, as bowels and heart represent. 

Jesus saw everything that was wrong with every single person---every physical deformity, every hurt, every worry, every need.  Deep within His heart, yes, His bowels, He felt compassion for all these distressed and dispirited people.  Other translations use words like harassed, helpless, weary, scattered, troubled, confused, hurting, and worried to describe these people following Jesus.  Jesus feels everything you feel, both the physical and the spiritual.  The Bible is clear that Jesus cares for you and wants to help you if you will put your trust in Him (Mark 5:19, John 11:33-38, I Peter 5:7). 

When Jesus looked at all these people and both felt and knew all their needs, He then told His disciples that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  That seems like an odd response to the compassion He felt.  Yet, the harvest represents the souls of those who do not know Jesus personally as Savior and Lord but are ready to receive Him just like a ripe crop is ready for reaping.  The Greek word for harvest means “the gathering of men into the kingdom of God”. 

Yes, the harvest is always plentiful, there are always many people ready to receive the Lord into their lives to help them deal with all their needs, but who is willing and available to work?  Who is willing and available to work for Jesus who sends His followers to bring people to Him?  Are you a worker for Jesus?  Are you helping the hurting people within the sphere of your life understand how they can find the Lord who will give them what they need to deal with their hurts?  Most people will not admit their hurts, but they are there, you must be assured that they are there.   

All the physical hurts and all the needs that all these people had can only be resolved by coming to Christ and letting all His love and strength and peace enter their lives.  Another image in my mind as I think about this passage and what Jesus saw in the multitudes are the words of the Steve Green recording “People Need the Lord”[1]---

“People need the Lord, people need the Lord at the end of broken dreams, He's the open door. When will we realize that we must give our lives, for people need the Lord.  People need the Lord.”

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[1] http://artists.letssingit.com/steve-green-lyrics-people-need-the-lord-drn6jtr

Tame how you speak

Psalm 141:3 (NIV)

Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips. 

Proverbs 10:19 (NLT)

Too much talk leads to sin.  Be sensible and keep your mouth shut. 

James 1:19 (NIV)

Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. 

Four steps will help tame faulty uses of your tongue:

1.   Ask God for help (Psalm 141:3 above)

2.   Ask others for help (James 5:16)

3.   Speak well of others (Ephesians 4:29)

4.   Speak less (James 1:19, Proverbs 10:19 above)

Perhaps the easiest of these to practice is to speak less.  Having lost most of my hearing I have learned that I really don’t miss that much from all the talking during a day because so much talk is really forgettable.  For the rest of this devotional, rather than me writing anything further, I choose to use great quotes from wise people about the importance of being quick to hear and speaking less.  Take all of these to heart that supplement what the Scriptures above are advocating:

·  “The trouble with talking too fast is you may say something you haven't thought of yet.” --Ann Landers

·  “Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.” --Robert Frost

·  “There are two types who say very little: the quiet type and the gabby type.” –Unknown

·  “Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”  -– Plato

·  “After all is said and done, more is said than done.” --Unknown

·  “Never miss a good chance to shut up.” –-Will Rogers

·  “Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.”-- Adlai Stevenson

·  “The more the words, the less the meaning, and how does that profit anyone?” -- Ecclesiastes 6:11

What do you need to do, if anything, to help you gain better control of the use of your tongue and to minimize or eliminate the faults that you have with what you say or how much you talk? 

Four promises that God will take care of you and your children

Psalm 37:23-26 (NCV)

When people's steps follow the Lord, God is pleased with their ways.  If they stumble, they will not fall, because the Lord holds their hand.  I was young, and now I am old, but I have never seen good people left helpless or their children begging for food. Good people always lend freely to others, and their children are a blessing. 

If you read this passage for the first time or perhaps had read it before but not as carefully as you just did now, what do you think?  Are not these verses awesome, encouraging, and comforting?  Let’s review four promises.

Promise 1. When you follow the Lord with your life’s actions, He is pleased with you.  Another way of stating this promise is that the Lord grants success to the one who desires to obey His commands or whose behavior He finds commendable.  You want to be successful in life, right?  Yet, likely your definition of success involves status, wealth, and power.  These are worldly views of success.  The spiritual view of success in life is a life that pleases the Lord.  Joshua 1:8 is the only verse in the Bible that uses a word that is translated in English as success.  Joshua 1:8 says that success results from being careful to do what the word of God commands. 

Promise 2.  If and when you stumble you will not fall because the Lord upholds you.  The Hebrew word for stumble means to make a mistake, even to fail, and the Hebrew word for fall here means be hurled down or thrown out.  If you are a person with whom God is pleased, while you still might make mistakes in your life, none of these mistakes or stumbles will hurt you permanently.  Why?  Because the Lord is always with you and protects you from getting seriously hurt by your stumble.  You might make a lapse in judgment, make a bad decision, and/or say or do something that is regrettable.  Yes, you will experience some momentary hurt, but the Lord will not allow you to be irreversibly hurt by your mistake(s). 

Promise 3.  Good people (righteous people……..people right with God) are never left helpless nor are their children ever starving or not taken care of.  You might know of examples where it appears that righteous people are in a state of helplessness or their children not cared for, but you may not know the true state of righteousness of that person or that their dire situation is not permanent.  The Lord will deliver them if they please Him with their actions. 

 
Promise 4.  Children of parents who are pleasing to the Lord will be blessings to others and blessed themselves.  No hope of a parent can be greater than this.

Are not these four promises awesome, encouraging, and comforting?  The key to all of them coming true for you is to trust in the truth of the word of God and do your best to follow (obey) His word every day of your life.  Yes, you will stumble from time to time in your efforts to be obedient, but praying and confessing your stumbles (sins) will enable the Lord to forgive you and make you righteous (I John 1:9).  Then you will be able to claim and stand on the promises of God.

“Standing on the promises I cannot fall,
List’ning every moment to the Spirit’s call,
Resting in my Savior as my all in all,
Standing on the promises of God.” – Russell K. Carter, “Standing on the Promises” (5^th stanza)[1].

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[1] http://library.timelesstruths.org/music/Standing_on_the_Promises/

Eight qualities of spiritual maturity

II Peter 1:5-7 (NLT)

In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone. 

In I Peter 1:3-4 it is written that God has given you  “great and precious promises” that enable you to be godly and free from human corruption.  The steps to secure these promises are then described.  You might call this “the staircase toward Christian maturity”.  Here the progress of spiritual growth is described.  There are eight spiritual qualities listed, some call eight callings or eight growth steps.  Dr. Joel Hunter’s last sermon in March of 1986 at Mt. Auburn United Methodist Church in Greenwood, IN before leaving to join the Northland Community Church in Orlando, FL was based on I Peter 1:5-7.  My respect for Dr. Hunter made me pay even more attention to the significance of these words. 

Every sincere Christian should seek and possess these eight spiritual qualities.  Each quality or virtue helps to develop the next although another interpretation is that faith in Christ is supplemented by seven elements of Christian holiness.

1.   Faith.  The foundation of spiritual maturity is your faith in Jesus Christ.  Without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).  Without the foundation of faith you cannot attain the other seven virtues.

2.   Moral excellence.  Your foundation of faith in Jesus Christ will then produce your ability to discern right from wrong.  The Greek word used here (arete) is closely related to purity, modesty and courage to stand for what is right.  

3.   Knowledge.  Moral excellence is supplemented by the filling of the Holy Spirit to guiding you to increase significantly your knowledge of God through your study of His Word.

4.   Self-control.  The discipline gained from developing knowledge from your Bible studies produces greater discipline of self-control and your willingness to sacrifice your personal desires in order to obey the Lord and to give preference to the needs of others.

5.   Patient endurance.  Discipline and self-control are supplemented by your increased ability to be patient and to endure adversity in your life.  Often patient endurance is manifested through your new ability to make it through life’s drudgeries (e.g. boredom) as well as through life’s challenges.

6.   Godliness.  Godliness means simply to be like God.  If you demonstrate the qualities of the previous five virtues, you will be living a life of godliness that will fulfill Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:13-16.  Meditate over these words! 

7.   Brotherly affection.  The Greek word used here is “philadelphia”.  Loving your brothers and sisters in Christ is the mark of a Christian (John 13:35).

8.   Love for everyone.  Love is the greatest quality or virtue of all (I Corinthians 13:13).  Loving your Christian brethren will lead to love (agape) for everyone in the sense of your putting yourself second to others’ needs.  You have become the person that Paul describes in Philippians 2:3-4 where you now naturally and for the rest of your life put others needs before your own.

I like how William MacDonald (Believers Bible Commentary, Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN, 1995, p. 2289) illustrates this passage:  “Add to your faith the courage of David; and to the courage of David the knowledge of Solomon; and to the knowledge of Solomon the patience of Job; and to the patience of Job the godliness of Daniel, and to the godliness of Daniel the brotherly kindness of Jonathan; and to the brotherly kindness of Jonathan, the love of John.

Where are you right now in this spiritual growth progression?  What do you need to do, with the Lord’s help, to progress to the next level?  Remember that spiritual growth is a life-long process so don’t be discouraged if you know that you have not yet fully attained some of these spiritual qualities.  They will describe you eventually if you keep seeking the Lord consistently and keep reading and applying His Word.