Matthew Series 2019

You wanna take a seat and grab a Bible in front of you on your chairs. And turn to Matthew chapter 9. Some page, 974. The details are on the screen behind me. It's Matthew chapter 9.

And we're gonna start at verse 35. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and illness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Asked the lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Jesus called his 12 disciples him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and illness. These are the names of the 12 apostles. First, Simon, who was called Peter and his brother Andrew. James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas, and Matthew, the tax collector, John, son of Alpheus, and Thaddeus, son, Simon, the zealot, and Judith Escariots who betrayed him. These 12, Jesus sent out with the following instructions, do not go among the gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans, go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.

As you go proclaim this message, the kingdom of heaven has come near. Heal those who are ill raise the dead cleans those who have leprosy, drive out demons freely you have received, freely give. Do not any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts, no bag for the journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff, for the worker is worth his keep. Oh, good morning. My name is Pete Woodcock.

I'm the pastor of the church. Keep that passage open. I wonder I wonder how you view people when you think of people, when you think of the crowds, what do you think? How do you view them? There's a an increasing, sort of belief that actually people are the cancer on this earth.

They're like parasites. So you have, the the the campaigning group, extinction rebellion or rebellion extinction, whichever way around it is. And and they're trying to get some of their young women to go on what they call birth strike. Don't have babies because they're cancerous. They're destroying the planet, and the big thing is not people, but the planet needs saving, needs rescuing.

That's what's going on. There was a a French, existential philosopher, John Paul Sartre, you may well have heard of him. His view of people is this. He said, hell, is other people. I mean, it's a it's quite shocking when you hear that.

And if you read about him, he did like his own space, and he liked his own company a lot. Hell is other people. It's a very, very shocking statement. But if we're honest, Do we get really near that statement in our actions? In the way we view people?

I mean, we talk about the crowds are a nightmare Don't we? We say things like that. Or it's hell on the roads. There's so many people. I mean, there's even a popular song about the m 25 called the road to hell.

And if you ever go on the m 25, which I was on Friday, It feels like that. What are these people doing? Why don't they go home? And then you're thinking what they're trying to, I suppose. But it's hell on the roads.

People are everywhere. Are they a cancer? Are they an annoyance? What's our response to people? What is our response to be?

Sometimes, as I say, they're just in the way, like traffic and queues. Sometimes we enjoy them because they entertain us. And we even pay them to entertain us. We like their companionship sometimes and their music and their drama and their films. Sometimes we really just wanna get away and we want to ignore them and avoid them.

Sometimes we're in competition with people. We wanna poke our heads up above the crowds and be better than them. Sometimes we just manipulate and use them for our own ends. Sometimes we'll partner with them if it helps us achieve what we want. We hate some.

We love some. We idolize others. We learn from some. We pay them to teach us things. We might even have pity on some.

But if you think about all of what I've just said, who's the center of all of that? It's me, isn't it? It's you. It's it's it's what we think is how we respond. We like people or we don't like people.

They're in our way or they're not in our way. It tends to be very self centered. Now, of course, there are times in our life and there are certain people that we're very sacrificial to, but by and large people are annoying. They get in the way. I've gotta forgive them.

I've gotta love them. I've got to and this is 1 of the reasons Jesus stands out. He absolutely stands out in the crowd. When he looks at the crowd, he sees people very, very differently. They're not there to be used or manipulated.

They're not there simply to entertain tame him. They're not there to, be ignored or be avoided. The nightmare the hell of other people is not that they're in his way to a comfortable life so that they can get on so he can get on with his life. The hell of other people is where they're going, where they are. And what he will go through to rescue them.

What you have here in these little verses, that we just read in Matthew, and we're gonna just do a very short series in Matthew, in in the mornings until we start a new term and we start a new series. But what we see here in these few verses in chapter 9 of Matthews's gospel verse 35 to 38, these 3 sentences is really what Jesus thinks of people and the challenges for us if we're Jesus people to be about the same thing. First thing I want you to see is the utter extreme work that he puts into people. He gives his his life for people. Look at verse 35 of chapter 9.

Jesus Wittold went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness. He went through all the towns and villages. Now Jesus has only got a few months left, on this earth before he goes to Jerusalem to the cross, ascends to heaven. But, here he is in a few months going through, and it says all the towns of Village, not just some, There are over 200 towns and villages in this area. If he'd if he took 4 months, That's 2 villages and towns and cities a day.

It's extraordinary work, what he's doing. It's extraordinarily exhausting. In fact, if you go back in Matthew's Gospel, we're given 1 day in the life of Jesus, 1 24 hour period. And that period goes from the end of Matthew chapter 4, right the way through to nearly the end of chapter 8. And in that period, he preaches the sermon on the Mount, which would be exhausting work, He comes down the the mount and ministers to 1 person after the other, after the other, after the other.

So much so he's so exhausted. He tries to get in a boat to sleep, and then 3 people accost him, and he deals with them. Then he's so tired he's in a boat, asleep, and there's a storm, and he doesn't wake up. This is a man that is totally giving his work life to other people. Physically draining.

And then all of the emotions and all the emotional energy with the crowds coming around, and healing him. You gotta remember when it says he heals the sick, and casts out demon, this the the this isn't This isn't him waving his Harry Potter wand or like those American evangelists that, you know, are brought in in their chauffeur driven cars and come onto the stage to an expectant audience, and they just wave their arm and everybody's healed. Jesus didn't work like that. You the the gospel writers slow us down and show us individual cases. He heals people individually and then applies that healing as he speaks into their life, but, you know, words.

In other words, when it says it healed many, it's not sweeping his arm and many are healed. He healed many 1 after the other, after the other, after the other, 1 at a time. This is exhausting work. But not only that, the enemies around him, the paparazzi, the journalists, they're twisting, recording, playing little bits of his recording, intercepting his emails. They're twisting things around.

That is exhausting when you have enemies like that, listening to every word editing every word. So verse 35, Jesus went through all the towns and villages teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. Now why did he do it? Is it because he's a workaholic? Is it because he's got his latest DVD coming out or set coming out?

Is it because he's got a book promotion that he's being wheeled out to sell? Why did he do it? So he could get you know, 3 week sex or holiday or a few more weekends off. We're told why he did it verse 36. When he saw the crowds, this is how he saw crowds.

When he saw the crowds, hell are other people? When he saw the crowds that they're just there to be manipulated to get a few votes. When he saw the crowds, he stood on the platform and said all of the idealistic pronouncements that any politician will say, to get an applause. Nada. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.

Because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. This isn't just to get votes. This isn't just to make promises that he can't fulfill. This isn't just saying flattering things so he gets applauded, applauded. When he sees the people, he sees what they're really like.

He sees the road to hell. Now I wanna say to you it's very, very hard to keep this vision of Jesus. It it it takes hard work To have this focus, because it's just so much easier to do other things. It's so much easier to want to entertain the crowd or flatter the crowd or get applause from the crowd or tell them that they're all alright, or tell them that they're all on the road to heaven, or just actually avoid them and go off into some kind of retreat and pray. It's very, very hard to go into a world that is cursed and fallen.

To try to reverse the curse and the fallenness. The Christian church so often gets distracted if you read the history of Christianity. I mean, it's extraordinary. You may probably know this 1. But William Carey, back in the eighteenth century, was a young man, you know, up in the north of England, and he his church that really believed that that they were really sound If you said to them, do you believe the Bible?

What do you mean to believe the Bible? I mean, they were quite angry people as far as I can see. But just we believe the Bible. We believe that. Look at us.

We're the Bible believers. We're the faithful. It's extraordinary that William Carey as a young man stood up to the church and said we must go over to India and we must preach the gospel to to those in India. We must go. It's extraordinary that this was the elders, the leaders of the church position.

They said to him, if god wanted the heathens, sorry if you're Indian, but they, as, English people, I've got 2 Indians right in front of it. If god wanted the the the heathen saved, he would do it without your help, young man. Where where did the church think that that was sound? Where how did they ever get to that they thought they were following the lord god, the lord Jesus Christ, that saw the crowds and had compassion on them that they could say that god is so sovereign and he doesn't need you. Of course, he doesn't need us, but that's how he chooses to work.

How could they get into this naval gazing? This anti gospel? It's extraordinary, though. The pressure and I know it as a church leader, the pressures to do anything or to do everything. But this, 1 of the biggest things I see today And it's interesting as I've been going to other churches and, listening to, 2 other preachers is that I think, you know, I wonder if we've lost the confidence in the message of the gospel.

Notice, Jesus is a herald. Do you notice that? A herald is someone who declares on behalf of a king. Speaks out. That's the duty of the herald to proclaim certainties.

These are what the king says. Look at verse 35 again. Just look at it. Jesus went through all the towns and villages, extraordinary amount of work, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every, disease and sickness. That word preaching there is the word herald, heralding, speaking out certainties.

That's his job. That's what he does. That's what he's giving his energies to. We're in an age that needs this more than ever. Now I guess every preacher says whatever age you're in that we need these certainties more than we've ever needed, but we do because people are totally lost, as we'll see in a minute.

There aren't any certainties anymore. We've taken it away from people, from children, You know, the signpost has fallen down. You're at a crossroads, but you don't know which way to go because you don't know where you've come from, and you don't know where you're going. So all you can live for is the now, the feeling of now. What do you feel like now?

Well, I feel like this now. It's so small. There isn't, what was called a meta narrative. It's just now. There's no big story to place myself in.

At at the best, if you lifted a signpost up that's been chopped down, it would say you came from nothing. You're irrelevant. You're a an accident. That's all we're telling them. There's no god who designed you.

You're an accident. You're a nothing. You're here by accident. And if we did lift up the signpost that said you're an accident, then the way to go is, well, there is nothing ahead. You're not important.

There's only death, but we don't want to talk about that. There is no god. There is no afterlife. All you've got is the now. How you feel now and live for now.

People are totally lost. They're confused. They don't know what they do. They just look within because that's the now. The nearest place you are is you.

So you look within. There's no sight for the future. There's no sight for where you've come from. So we just save the planet perhaps. And therefore, we get rid of babies.

There's no understanding of what humanity is or what the planet about or why it's here in the first place. When the church loses confidence in this good news that it's got for this lost world. It becomes anything but the church. And it's hard work to keep that up. Gotta keep going on that.

And so this is why I've chosen this passage. Because we need to look out to Kingston. God has placed us here to reach the heathen. And the heathen are the English very, very much so. And the people that live in Kingston, whatever the background they're from, confused.

We need to think every 1 of you that is part of a department or something or whatever we call it, you know, a work in this church. We need to up our evangelism. You know, whether it's the women's bible study group, we need to be thinking, hold it. How do we reach out? Whether it's the games, you know, group.

We need to be thinking whether the film club. We need to not just be putting these events on. We need to be thinking How do we reach out? How do we how do we get these confused people? How do we herald?

How do we preach? How do we teach? We've got to constantly come back. Otherwise, we'll have a whole program of lovely things that we all enjoy. But the lost are out there.

That's my first point then. His work It's incredible. He sticks at it. Tonight, I'm gonna be carrying on that emphasis. It's an amazing passage, actually, tonight.

In Luke 9. The second thing, though, is the compassion of Jesus as he looks out at the crowd So with this hard work, where's it come from? Well, it comes from verse 36. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them. Jesus is moved with compassion.

This is a gut wrenching word. It's a gut word. It's it's it's it's your gut is is, you know, churning up. You know, it it's a bit like, you know, getting full sorry, because I just saw you. When you you looked up at that right moment, it's like, shoving, you know, gluten down down him or all you that are celiacs and every other person seems to be gluten free It's like a shoving gluten down you.

And what will happen? There'll be some tummy noises going on and faces and everything's thinking about the stomach and I've gotta get to that toilet quick and there's someone in it and there's no toilet paper. And, you know, it's that's the word. Yeah? It's gut, it's compassion, it's it's it's gut wrenching, it's being moved.

Look at first 36 or second half because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. When he looked at the crowd, they weren't an irritation. He had this gut wrenching compassion for them. Why? Because they're harassed.

Now that's a very strong word that's in the original Greek. It means they're exhausted. They've got such a hectic schedule to fill up their little lives in the now that they're exhausted and confused The actual Greek word comes describing a corpse that's been mangled or even skinned alive. These are very strong words battered and exhausted and ripped and torn and devastated and mutilated. That's the word.

Here are people that are so taken up with their life that they're harassed, their mutilated bodies, bruised and beaten. We're living in a world that is extraordinary on this. We're living in a world where men will mutilate their bodies to try to become women. And we're pushing that. And we're saying that's a good idea instead of, okay, dear friends, you need help.

We need to help you. We need to love you. We need to take you through this this difficulty that you're going through within your mind. We're we're promoting that. Mass occurred mutilated bodies, harassed trying to find what life is about, standing at the crossroads come from nowhere going nowhere.

It must mean that I need to change something inside of me. The The pressure is such bad news. There is no good news, but me inventing myself, reinventing myself, mutilating myself, He's deeply moved when he sees that. Helpless is the second word is used. It means to be thrown down and just feeling hopeless.

Think of all the young people now that they're talking about and they're talking about constantly with with mental health issues And no 1 asks why, really, or they do, but they only go surface. Helpless, young people helpless, unlike sheep without a shepherd, Sheep without a shepherd will soon run into difficulties because they're stupid animals. They starve themselves. They eat the wrong thing. They think they're they go for the wrong food.

A friend of mine, I think I've told this story before, had a, just up the road, had a, in Cerberus, had a little garden, and he kept a pet sheep in it. He called it Lambo, after Rambo, Lambo the sheep. And, he had a little fence And there was lovely lush grass in this little fence that little Lambo was, was, you know, living in. But Lambo, like all sheep are stupid, they don't want the grass here because the grass is always greener, isn't it? Which is nonsense.

So he stuck his head out the little fence and an et. And when you went, you saw all of all of his chewing was around the edge of the fence where he could just get his neck out. The problem is my friend had a pear tree, and the pears fell just outside the fence, but Lambo could stick his neck out and get the pears. Do you know what happens when sheep eat pears? It ferments in their tummy, and they get drunk.

And Lambo was a total drunk. He stuck his head out, was eating, and he was drunk. He fell over, drunk with his little legs. Drunk, just like the rest of people in Cerberus, but there he was, drunk. And you know what happens when little sheep that are drunk fall on their backs.

Do you know what happens? The magpies come. And do you know what Magpies like? Eyeballs. That's what happens with sheep without a shepherd.

That's what happens. Jesus looks out at the crowd, they're not just in the way They're harassed, they're helpless, they're sheep without a shepherd. Oh, he condemns the shepherds, which were the pharaces of the day, of no time to read it. But if you read, ezekiel, you'll see these false shepherds are brutal to their sheep. That they're using them, manipulating their sheep.

They allow wild animals to take over their sheep. And here are the leaders, and they slaughter the they slaughter the flock, and they they use them for their own ends, and they promise them things and lie to them, and and all of this, if only you get this, you'll be happy. If you get this, if you do this, if you receive this, if you change in this way, you'll be happy. What they need though is a good shepherd, and Jesus is the good shepherd. See, when we look out at Kingston, what are we doing?

How do we see people? The thousands of students that come to Kingston University. I mean, what is it? It goes up every year. Is it 29000 students come to Kingston University?

29000 students, young people. We need to be praying that there will be good as we've got some in our in our church, students that love the lord and will take on the 29000 students and not get distracted as Christian unions so often are up and down the country arguing about wrong things but actually, and just wanting to entertain themselves and have pizza parties, but actually they'll turn out and they'll say 29000 This is why god has brought me to Kingston University. Help me someone to go and preach the gospel to them. Has prayed the lord will bring people and raise up more students like we've had in the past, but more this year. 3 and a half million shoppers in Kingston every year.

All of those nightclubs all of the alcohol, sheep without a shepherd. Do you know the question that haunts me? It sometimes keeps me awake at night that are we as a church gonna be compassionate to the lost? Or am I making a nice middle class comfortable church that is just has enough zeal to convince itself we're good. Will we be compassionate?

There's a third thing, though. You see the work of Jesus. You see the compassion of Jesus, but here's the prayer of Jesus. Here's the prayer. Look at verse 37 and 38.

Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into the harvest. So Jesus has given himself in his work because he loves them, He has compassion on them, and he sees the terrible condition that people are in. But he also knows there's a harvest time coming up Now if we'd worked our way, or if we were carrying on working our way through Matthews's gospel, you see Jesus does talk about a harvest. He says there's good and bad fish There's fish that are going to be in eternal life, and there's fish that are going to be in the place of weeping and gnashing, of teeth.

He talks about, you know, the harvest of, of, the weeds and the weeds, and the weeds will be bundled up and burned up in the place of fire where there'll be weeping and gnashing of teeth, and then the wheat will be in the Golden Kingdom. Paul says this in 2 Corinthians chapter 5 when he's writing to Christians, since we know what it is to fear the lord, we try to persuade people. So as we look out at people, we should see a road to hell. And as we see that, we're not there to just condemn. I'll be picking this up to, tonight.

We're not there just to throw stones at people. We're there to correct and speak truth, which won't go down very well. But we're we're we're actually there to be compassionate and and to see that actually when they need rescuing. People need rescuing. They need the good news of Jesus.

In their lives. They need the good news of Jesus in order to actually navigate this life, but they need the good news of Jesus because there is a harvest coming. There is a heaven and hell and eternity. They need the good use of Jesus, and Jesus is saying, look, the harvest is there. See, he's a half full person.

I don't, half glass full person. I don't I don't know what you are. I tend to be that. There's hope, there's optimism. Let's let's get more houses built in Kingston.

Let's make those flats even bigger. Let's pull in the people. Let's go to the Cambridge Estate, and they they wanna put another, whatever it is, make up to 2000 homes there. Brilliant. Yeah?

Put up a bigger block. We should be saying no, no. We don't want because we want oh, no. We want the block a little bit lower because our it it it it it asks the sun in our garden. No raise it up.

Get shards everywhere. Get thousands of people in because the more people there are, then the more we can reach. So so, you know, this this is and and and Jesus says, look, when we look out, that that the harvest is great. There's a fantastic potential there. All the people around us, Let's go for it.

But there's a problem. What is the problem? The work is a few. There's a great harvest, but the work is a few. I mean, if we don't harvest, then the grain will rot.

As a as a sheep needs a shepherd, So the harvest needs a harvester when the problem is that the workers are few. That's the problem. Well, what's the solution? Well, it's easy. I'll tell you what the solution is.

Pray. Pray. Pray the lord of the harvests with raise up harvesters. It's a wonderful thing. You see god doesn't just do magic.

Again, it's not the Harry Potter thing. It it's not just that, you know, I'll sort it out. He sends us. He uses us We pray he uses us us to be about his harvesting. God loves to bless the world, but he loves to bless the world through his people.

He's still the lord of the harvest, so we can have confidence. We need to pray. We need to pray. The lord will raise up harvesters. And that's what we're trying to do.

I mean, there are lots of people we could identify that we would love to push into a work that could set them free in order to be full time about harvesting. Loads of people in this church, and that's a privilege But we can't do everyone because we do need some people to make money so we can pay for it. So we're all about the work, but we we we wanna go for we've we've we've got Ben in mind to raise up to send out. Do you know, there are loads of people, and we get this a lot, saying, is there a preacher? Have you got a worker?

I had a few even last week. Is, have you got someone? And as well, I will, but we need to raise up these young men. We've got worry, and we've got, you know, we're focusing in on these 2 at the moment. So we pray, lord, raised them up.

Now we've got to pray lord. Well, some of you work a bit harder or get your bonus. So in order that we can send them out, this this is how we view people. How we view our monies, how we view people? So the fourth thing and the last thing, the team of Jesus.

Do you see this? So he looks out, and he works hard. He has compassion He prays, says pray, and then look at the team. It's just wonderful. It's magnificence in its orderiness.

It's magnificence in its ordinaryness. First 38, you see the trouble is we put chapters in, and it sort of breaks it up. You gotta carry on from verse 38 through to chapter 10 verse 1. Ask the lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field He called his 12 disciples to him and gave them authority to drive our evil spirits and to heal every disease and sick this, these are the names of the 12 apostles, and he goes through them. And they're all ordinary.

And as as people have often The only 1 that's extraordinary there that's got any talent whatsoever is probably judas. They're all just ordinary. Now, presumably, the disciples did pray, lord, raise up harvesters, and the lord said, okay. Great. Your go.

You know, we we tend to do the lord raise up harv raise up harvesters. He could go. She could go. Definitely. But I'm not.

We've gotta be praying that ordinary people would be raised up to go into god's harvest because god loves to use the ordinary for extraordinary work because then he's glorified. I can absolutely tell you when I was first converted, no 1 would have thought I would have been a preacher. It it would be ridiculous. God uses ordinary people. So let's pray.

Let's ask the lord to raise up not what do we get out of people, but what can we give into this work to reach these people? Is that tears in our eyes for kingston Are we just walking through Kingston and seeing what we could get in the summer sales? Or do we see the crowds? That need reaching. 1 of the troubles with us as Christians, that I I know this myself is that we're so blessed by god that we enjoy the blessings and forget the giver.

We're so blessed Some of you have got husbands and wives be because of church, because of the gospel. Such a blessing, but then suddenly that family becomes the idol. We've gotta keep going. And the older we get, and the more we wanna settle down and take a breath, the more we've got to remind ourselves let's get up. Let's keep running.

Let's keep going. I've told you this illustration before, but I can't think of a better 1. I have a book in my in in my, books on my bookshelf. It's 1 of the best titles, if not the best title for a book I I've ever had In fact, it's such a good title. I'm scared to read the book and never had have.

You know, I've made up the story on from the title of the book. I don't know whether the book the book goes along this line or not. That's why I don't want to read it. So if someone says that good book, that's fantastic. I wrote it from the title.

The the title of the book is called Cinderella with Amnesia. Cinderella with Amnesia. Such a good title, isn't it? This is my version. I've no idea how the book goes, but this is how it goes in my mind.

Here's Cinderella. She's a slave girl. She's harassed and helpless and a sheep without a shepherd. Little Cinderella, you know the story. The people around her harass her, and mistreat her.

There's little Cinderella. But something happened, a gospel came into her life, someone with a message, of a better, better world. And she went to the ball. Remember? If you follow the Disney version of it, She went to the ball and, and, lost her silver slipper or whatever in his glass slipper.

But the good news is that the king hunted around to find the foot and fa finds her eventually. And now she's a queen. She's married to the king. What blessings came through the good news for her? But now she wakes up, and she's got amnesia.

She's forgotten where she's from. She's forgotten that she used to be harassed and helpless and a sheep without a shepherd. And now she has servants And she's got plans to make royal, you know, ballets to go to, and royal parties to put on, and She's got to choose the color of the dress and choose the food for the banquets and she's taken up and the servants need to get on get on with life. And she's forgotten where she's come from. She's Cinderella with amnesia.

And sometimes, the blessings of church and Christianity are so good. We forget our task. Which is to go into a cursed and broken and fallen world with the good news of Jesus. And see other slave girls rescued brought in to the kingdom of god. Let's be about this.

Let's recommit to this. Let's recommit to this task. All of you that are parts of the, you know, Sunday school, children's work, youth work, whatever it is you're doing. Let's say, hold it. How how do we look out?

How do we reach? Kingston is harassed and helpless and sheep without a shepherd, and we have the good news. How how do we how do we re go for this? Father god, please help us not to be cinderella's with amnesia. Help us to see that we were saved, and others need it too.

We pray in your name, amen.