Evangelists on Training Wheels
Matthew 9:35-10:15
June 12, 2005
First Baptist Church, Wilson, NC

            I have another weird sermon title today, “Evangelists on Training Wheels,” but hear me out.  What I am about to read is the story of the first time Jesus sent his disciples out as evangelists.  It would be the first time they would go out to proclaim the gospel without him.  It reminds me of the time our daughter Whitney was learning to ride a bike.  I remember helping her up on the bike, and then jogging alongside like a Secret Service agent guarding her with my life.  But the time came for me to let go, and let her head off on her own. Thank God for training wheels.  But then came a time for them to come off too, and for her to truly be on her own.  And then I could ride my bike with her, and we would go off together to downtown Elizabeth City and to the water for some adventure.

            In Matthew 9 and 10 Jesus is preparing and training his students for the day they will go off on their own.  It is as if these novice evangelists are trundling off on training wheels.  And so it is for you and me too.  There comes a time for all of us when Jesus says, “Now it’s time for you to go and do what I’ve been doing.”  And so we pedal away and try to take the good news to someone else.  We all begin as novice evangelistsÑevangelists on training wheels -- weaving back and forth, slightly off balance.  And we worry that we will fall down and get scraped and bruised or worse.  But our Lord, the model evangelist, does everything in his power to prepare us, even as he did the first disciples.  Let us see what he did for them, and what he does for us now.  (Read Matthew 9:35 Ð 10:15)

            How did Jesus get his followers ready to go out on their own and spread the gospel?  Jesus did two things: he let them imitate him and do the same things he had done, and he also gave them the big picture of how important was what they were about to do.  The disciples got his personal example for imitation, and they got the big picture for motivation.

            Before I focus on the big picture, let me briefly outline his personal example.

THE IMITATION OF THE EVANGELIST

            In 9:35 we get a summary of what Jesus has been doing all along:

Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.

Later in 10:7-8 we get a summary of what Jesus called the disciples to do:

As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’  Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.’

When you put what Jesus had been doing all along beside what he called the disciples to do, you see they are practically the same.  To the disciples then, and to us novice evangelists now, Jesus is saying the same thing, “As you go out, just do what you’ve been watching me do.”  Just do what you see me do:

• Start small and local in your own neighborhood, (10:6) and then reach out to the ends of the earth, like I do.   (28:16-20)

• Follow up your words with your deeds, as I do when my signs and wonders proclaim that God is near.  (10:7-8)

• Do it all with no charge, as I gave the gospel to you with no charge.  (10:8)

• And travel light so that you depend on God, just as I have traveled light among you.  (10:9)

We apprentice evangelists learn from the model evangelist how to spread the good news of God.  Christ does not ask us to do anything Christ has not first done himself.  And so we learn.  We could benefit by pondering his example, but today I’ll focus on the second way Christ gets you and me ready to be evangelists.  Christ gets us ready to be evangelists.  Christ gives us the big picture of the importance of sharing the gospel.

THE BIG PICTURE

            Jesus gave them four vivid images that combined to form that picture:

1) The Big Picture: Sheep Without a Shepherd (10:36)

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

What Jesus saw in people moved him deeply: their suffering, how their souls were starved for nourishment, how they wandered around for lack of meaning or purpose.  The farmers and the merchants of his time were in a particularly difficult position.  Their tradition branded them ritually unclean because of all the things they had to handle in the course of their daily work.  But none of the religious leaders offered a practical way to deal with their situation.  When Jesus considered their fix, he was deeply moved.

            Look around now at the people of our culture, how they wander from one self-help book and guru to another, from Dr. Phil and Oprah to Dr. Laura and others.  People are so hungry for guidance that the demand for personal trainers and personal life coaches is skyrocketing.  Yet people are still as directionless and as hungry for guidance as ever.  And there are others who have no time or money to pursuer any of the above, who are also adrift in our society: the unemployed, the poor and the hungry, the substance addicted.  So many people are so lost in body, mind, and soul.  Christ has a heart for the sick, the dying, and the unclean.  In our time, in corporations, in government, in education, in healthcare, who are the sick and the dying and the unclean?  When we notice them, the sight of them will move us to the core of our being.  Compassion is the engine that moves our Lord and anyone who follows him. 

2) The Big Picture: The Harvest is Plentiful (vv. 37-38)

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”

            I once thought these words meant: “there are a lot of people out there who don’t know a thing about God.  The thought of going to people who don’t know God at all and starting from square one with them was a rather bleak picture.

            But now I hear “the harvest is plentiful” in a very positive way: the harvest is already here and it is plentiful!  The big picture is that God has already been at work in the fields.  There are people out there God has been cultivating for a long time. God has been at work with them to germinate faith and to cultivate it.  They have already begun to bloom in God’s presence.  They are ready for the harvest! 

            To me that makes all the difference.  As I look to my neighbors and relatives and all the other people in the circles I circulate in, I wonder which ones has God been working with already?  Which ones are beginning to bloom in faith?  Which ones are already receptive to my help in bringing them in as part of God’s great harvest?  The harvest is plentiful.  There are people ready.  Now, who will go and bring them in?  The call is even more urgent than I had thought.

            In the movie “Places in the Heart,” Sallie Field played Edna Spalding, a widow who had to bring the cotton in from her fields.  If she could get her crop in first in the county, she would get a cash prize enough to save her farm home and keep her family together.  There was nothing more important to her than bringing in the harvest.  One hand told her, “Once and for all we can’t do it and you best stop thinking about it before you end up killing yourself.”  Said Edna, “Now you listen to me.  I don’t care if it kills me.  I don’t care if it kills you.  I’m not going to give up.  If we lose this place I’m going to lose what’s left of my family.”  They get the cotton in first, and her family was saved. 

            To Christ it is just as urgent to bring in the harvest of people that surrounds us.  So he says, “Pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”  (9:38)  And before his disciples had time to finish their prayers, the next thing we read is Jesus summoning them to go bring the harvest in.  (Another example of be careful what you pray for.)

            The call from the Lord to go into the harvest is just that urgent for us.  We may feel the Lord’s tap on our shoulder before we even finish praying.  We may hear the Lord’s call in some unusual way.  Bob Clyde, campus minister at East Carolina, tells of the time he took a mission team into Washington, D.C. to work in a homeless shelter.  One day they were working in the shelter when four plains-clothes D.C. detectives came through the doors.  From their overcoats they drew four shotguns.  There was a man they wanted to pick up, a man who might be armed, and they were going to make sure there would be no trouble.  It looked like the police were coming straight for those scared East Carolina students.  The detectives pumped their guns once to drive a shell into the chamber, “kerCHUNK.”  And one of those students, remembering that day, said, “In that kerCHUNK” I heard the call of God.”  “kerCHUNK,” “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are fewÉ”  And this very day that student is running a shelter for the homeless in Raleigh, being an evangelist of God’s good news to the least of these. 

            The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.  Out there are plenty of people that God has been working on for some time.  And they are just waiting for someone to come along and help them be harvested. 

3) The Big Picture: Authority for Ministry

            Jesus gave his novice evangelists a third image of the big picture, in 10:1:

Then Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to cure every disease and every sickness.

In other words, Jesus told them: You can do this!  I give you the spiritual power and authority to do the very same impossible wonders that I have been doing!  But they will be possible with you, for I send you out with the strength of God. 

            The Lord gives us more authority and more power than we usually admit.  Our deacons work hard at ministering to the families assigned to them.  They get asked to do things they don’t think they can do, like be with a family that has just lost a loved one.  I mean, what can one person do then?  What is there to say?  Often they just sit there with the family, silently.  And then some weeks later they will get a note from the family saying, “You will never know what a difference you made for us that day.  We sensed the power of God there with us through you.  Thank you.”  God gives us more authority and more power than we think.  And then God sends us out to be agents of God’s good news in the fields white with harvest.

            Another story of the authority God gives us.  Tony Campolo, an Italian Baptist sociologist, is also one of the nation’s greatest preachers, so he travels a lot.  On one flight he had the middle seat, shoehorned in between two hundred pound men.  One of the men on his left was obviously in some kind of distress.  So what was there for Tony to do?  He leaned to his left, practically onto the shoulder of the man, and silently prayed for him.  Next thing Tony knows, this man suddenly starts pouring out his heart to Tony, and Tony shares with him the good news of the gospel of God.  God gives us more authority and power than we usually admit.

4) The Big Picture: The Rule of God

            Jesus gave his evangelists on training wheels one more glimpse of the big picture when he told them:

As you go, proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.”  (10:7)

That is the biggest part of the big picture.  Something way bigger than you and me is happening around us.  God is coming.  God’s rule and reign is coming.  Proclaim it.  Better yet, live it as you let God rule you, and then people will not only hear it, they will see it, they will see that the kingdom of heaven has really come near.

            That’s how Jesus gets us evangelists ready to start out on training wheels, by giving us glimpses of the Big Picture:

• We see sheep without a shepherd all around us, and we have compassion.
• We see a plentiful harvest, and we hear God’s call to lend a hand.
• We see the authority Christ has given us, and we believe we can make a difference.
• We see God’s authority and rule coming near, and we place ourselves under God’s reign.

            So take off from here all you novice evangelists.  Your witness may be a bit wobbly, as an evangelist you may still feel like you’re pedaling with training wheels.  But see the sheep without a shepherd, see the harvest ready, feel the authority Christ has placed on you, and then go out and tell people that God’s rule is so close it is right on top of us.

            Douglas E. Murray