If you have your Bible tonight, we're turning to Matthew chapter 9. I'd like to thank Reverend McClung for the invitation to come tonight. It's a joy to be here with you and to bring the Lord's Word. It's good to see our brother and Reverend Mrs. Cranston here tonight too. I want to thank David for help with the computer as well. I always get very nervous when it comes to showing a PowerPoint presentation of any kind of thing because when we were in Greenville many times, I think three Wednesday nights in a row, We had planned to show a video presentation, and three weeks in a row it didn't work out. And I had to find something to say, having not prepared to preach at all those nights. And I didn't want that to be the case again tonight, so I appreciate David's help in doing that. It is a joy to be here. and I do pray the Lord will bless our time together now as we come around his Word. We're going to read just a few verses at the end of chapter 9, reading from verse 35 down to the end of verse 38. These are words that come at the very end of a very busy chapter in the Saviour's ministry. Chapter 9 of Matthew's Gospel is full of miracles, full of the Lord working here and there, And it's that theme we want to look at a little tonight. Verse 35, And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few. Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest. Amen. We'll finish there at verse 38, and we pray the Lord will bless his word to our hearts tonight for Jesus' sake. It's really verse 36 that I want to focus on. We're told here that when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. And the theme that I want to consider with you tonight as we come around this passage is the theme of regaining a passion for souls. Regaining a passion for souls. And we'll take these verses, and this verse especially, as our text tonight. With our Bibles open there, let's seek the Lord together in a word of prayer. Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee tonight for Thy grace and goodness to us already. We bless Thee for this time of worship, of coming into Thy house and to sing thy praise and to read thy word and to seek thy face in prayer. We thank thee, Lord, for what thou hast done and are continuing to do in Mexico City. We thank thee, Lord, for answering prayer. We thank thee for working in the salvation of souls. We thank thee for adding to the laborers who are laboring down there. And we pray, Lord, tonight that you'll keep your hand upon them for good. Bless us here tonight. Reveal to us something more. of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. And Father, give us a heart like His as we consider the work and the great needs that are before us. We pray, Lord, that will stir our souls tonight and revive us and quicken us afresh. Fill me with Thy Spirit now. Give help in the preaching of Thy Word. Give help in the hearing of the Word too. And we pray tonight that Thy name would be exalted. and Christ will be glorified among us. Answer prayer. We pray this in our Saviour's name and for His sake. Amen. Matthew chapter 9 and verse 35 provides us with a very brief but a comprehensive summary of the earthly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. We know from other places in Scripture that Christ set Himself to be about His Father's business. We know that He did not come to be ministered unto, but to minister. and that he was resolved to work while it was yet day, for Christ knew the night would come when no man could work. Our Lord Jesus Christ was the perfect servant. He went about doing good, and although there were times when he was physically weary and times when he was physically opposed, he was never restrained or restricted in his service among men. And that truth about our Savior comes to the fore in verse 35 of this chapter. We're told that Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. Now, there are certain things in that verse that demand our close attention. You have something there about the extent of Christ's ministry. The verse tells us that he went about all the cities and villages. Those words reveal to us that Christ went throughout Galilee, And he did not confine himself to places where large numbers of people live. Rather, we're told here, he went into the villages as well. The word villages is an interesting term. It carries the idea of a place where laborers would sleep. In other words, Christ went to the place where the common people were. The scribes and the Pharisees of his day had little time for the poor and lowly among them. They didn't care much for the working class. They stood in the street corners and often looked down their noses upon those who were beneath them, at least as they considered them to be so. But our Lord Jesus Christ was not like that. He went into the cities and the villages. He went into the places where the common people were. And of course, we know from Scripture that the common people heard him gladly. But our Savior had the gospel for all types of people. John Gill, the commentator, noted of that, that Jesus did not confine himself and his acts of kindness and compassion to his own city, Capernaum. But he took a circuit throughout all Galilee, and not only visited the larger and more principled cities and towns, but their villages also, doing good to the bodies and souls of men in every place and of whatever state and condition." What we're learning here from verse 35 is that Jesus Christ ministered to all types of people. He ministered to all classes of men and women. Not just those in the cities, but those who were among the poorest of society. Notice also, not just the extent of his ministry, notice the essence of his ministry. Because the verse tells us that Christ taught and preached and healed. In other words, he met people at the very point of their need. He taught the gospel. He preached to them regarding the kingdom of God. He ministered to their souls. He called on them to repent and believe the gospel. But he also ministered to their bodies. Our Lord Jesus Christ saw the great needs of the people, and He brought life and healing to them. He had not come to minister to, but Christ had come to minister to others. He hadn't come that others would see to His need, but He would see to theirs. Notice also the earnestness of His ministry here. Our Savior did not wait for people to simply come to Him, though it is true that some did come to the Savior. But the inference of this text is that Christ went to them. You can pay particular attention to that little phrase, Jesus went about. The words literally mean that Christ continually went about or continually walked about. So you have a picture of our Savior going from place to place, constantly busy, constantly active among the Savior's work and among his Father's business. There was nothing slothful about Christ during his earthly ministry. He went about. In other words, Christ took the initiative. He went to the people, where the people were, and he met them in their own places and brought the message of the gospel to them. You'll also notice the effectiveness of his ministry here, because we're told in the verse that he healed every sick and every diseased person that he met. None were turned away. Christ was never too busy for them. He did not heal the Jews and refuse the Gentiles. He did not simply take to the religious and reject the others. There was a fullness with Christ and a readiness from the Savior to receive all who came unto him. So from one text of Scripture, we learn something of the industry and the intent and the impact of our Savior's ministry. And of course, all of this time, he is surrounded and thronged by multitudes of people. There were times when Christ liked to go away by himself. He often went to the mountain to pray alone. There were times when he spoke directly to individuals and when no one else was near. We think of John chapter 3 when Christ ministered to Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4. There were times when Christ went by himself and just some of his disciples. But there were other times when he was surrounded by multitude, when the people thronged him. And it is in that context we read the words of our text, that when he saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep, having no shepherd." Our Lord has been in and around Galilee at this time, and He saw these people as He looked upon them. These multitudes who were now pressing in against Him and thronging around Him. As our Lord looked upon that multitude, He was moved. And as a result of his own compassion, he called on his disciples to do something, because he said to his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. And I suggest tonight that there's a heart-searching and very solemn challenge for us here. We're not in Galilee, we're in Ulster, but the needs are the same. There are sinners all around us, and the spiritual harvest needs to be reaped, and we need, therefore, a Christ-like compassion for the lost. That's my theme tonight, regaining a passion for lost souls. Notice with me tonight three things here. Notice, first of all, the text paints a great tragedy. It paints a great tragedy. When verse 36 describes the people of Galilee, it says nothing about their standing in society, nothing about their color, nothing about their education, nothing about their family background. It doesn't mention any of those things. Rather, what it says is that they were people who were faint and scattered and who were like sheep without a shepherd. Now, unquestionably, there's something there of a physical explanation for these words. The word faint means to lie down. In fact, the marginal reading suggests that they were tired and lay down. The word scattered takes a little further and carries the thought of falling down, almost falling down suddenly. The phrase, like a sheep without a shepherd, conveys the thought of wandering about. And when sheep have no shepherd, they go astray. They rarely stay together. They go their own way. And it's not really too difficult, I think, to imagine that kind of scene unfolding before the Savior's eyes. People had followed after Christ here. They've been running after Him. Whenever He would go from one place to another, the multitudes would follow after Him. And that's the kind of scene that's unfolding in these verses. These people have left their homes to meet the Savior. And no doubt, many of them have been following Christ for some time. And now it comes to this point, and quite physically, they're exhausted. And they're simply lying down, or they're falling down, in sight of the Savior. So there's a physical aspect to what's being described here. But this was not just simply a physical thing. When Christ sees the multitudes, as verse 36 tells us, he was moved with compassion on them because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. When the verse tells us that of Christ, we're to understand that what was true physically of these people was even more so true of them spiritually. Christ saw the multitude as people who were fainting and falling in their sin, and he likened them to lost and wandering sheep that disturbed Christ, that troubled him. I have no doubt the language of this text is borrowed from Ezekiel chapter 34, verse 11 and 12, where we read these words, For thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out as a shepherd, seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered. So will I seek out my sheep and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. Christ is the shepherd that's mentioned there in Ezekiel 34. And now in his own earthly ministry, Christ, who described himself as the good shepherd, as he looks upon these multitudes of people around him, he sees the people like that. He sees them in their sin. There's no one to lead them. Spiritually, there's no one to provide for them spiritually. There's no one to protect them spiritually. And therefore, he sees them as needy souls. I think it's worth emphasizing that point. Christ did not just see people. He saw lost people. He saw sinners in terrible danger. He saw men and women ravaged by the effects of empty religion. and destroyed by the lusts of their own flesh. He saw beyond the outward appearance of these people who had been following him. He saw beyond their faces. He saw beyond their circumstances. Christ saw hearts that were deceitful and desperately wicked. He saw those who are described in Isaiah 53 as those who are wandering away and going astray. He saw sinners dying in their sin. Our Lord saw lost sinners on the age of hell. He saw them. Verse 36 emphasizes that when he saw the multitude, there's nothing more pitiful than this. I suggest tonight that this is the tragedy of all tragedies. Think of people living life in this horrible situation. It's the tragedy of this day. It's the tragedy of countless thousands around us in this province. I think it's sometimes easier for us to see it when we consider a foreign country. We think of Africa, we think of China, we think of India. We think of Asia, we send missionaries out there, we see pictures of heathen temples and pagan rituals, even in Mexico. The witch doctors, the Aztec dancers, the whole pagan superstition religion that rules so many lives in foreign countries. And we have no difficulty in thinking of people in those nations as people in a desperately sinful spiritual state, and they are. And we ought to have compassion upon them But believer, we can look closer at home and there are teeming multitudes in this country and in our towns and our cities and our villages who are just as dead in their sins and who live day after day without Jesus. There are multitudes tonight who have gone their own way and are far from God. Some are church goers. Some will be in church tomorrow morning all over the country, but they have never experienced the new birth and they are without Christ. Some have made idols out of money and wealth and their employment and their recreation and their families and they've lived for years as idolaters who are snared in the cares of this world. Some are secretly addicted, sometimes openly addicted to the awful vices of this world, to the wickedness that men present and publish and produce and broadcast. Addicted to. Some are godless in their thinking. simply despise the gospel of Jesus Christ. Some are just plain indifferent to the things of God. And they live every day as if there was nothing more to life than just the present here and now. And some are drunkards and drug addicts and adulterers and live their lives with as much sin as they can. They're like sheep without a shepherd. They're scattered and fainting and falling. They don't have Christ. They're yet in their sin. They're far from God. They don't know what it is to be cleansed from their sin or justified before God. They're lost and condemned and miserable and guilty and on a road to a lost hell where the fire is never quenched. and the suffering of the damned never end. They're like the multitude that surrounded Christ in Galilee, and theirs is a tragic story. And believer, we need to open our eyes and see them now. That unsaved neighbor of yours is just a step away from death and despair. That unsaved child that comes to our children's meetings is just a step away from death and despair. That unsaved work colleague is within a heartbeat of being lost. That unsaved son or daughter hanging over hell by a thread. They don't realize the eternal danger there. They don't see it as a tragedy. They don't see it as a tragedy at all. Those on sea of people that we meet with day after day and week after week, they are far from God and they're poised to stand before the judge of all the earth and hear him say, depart from me ye worker of iniquity. We are surrounded by Christless people, lost, helpless, wandering, and it's nothing short of it. Believer, let us see that. I fear sometimes we'll lose sight of it. I fear sometimes the Church of Christ has shut its eyes to the spiritual state of multitude. It's easy for us to come to church, Lord's Day by Lord's Day. It's easy for us to go through our lives with all that we do as professing Christians, but to lose the burden. It's easy for us to become so accustomed to what's taking place in the country with men and women. We don't really see it as a trip. Christ saw the multitude fainting and falling and scattered like sheep without a shepherd. We see men, women, boys and girls. We see them walking. We see them living. We see them laughing. But we need to see them as sinners in desperate need of Christ. May God touch our hearts. So the verse paints a great tragedy, but it also paints a great tenderness. Verse 36 not only tells us what Christ saw, it also tells us how Christ felt. When he saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion on them. What does that mean, moved with compassion? Moved with compassion. That little phrase comes from one word in the original Greek. And it means to yearn inwardly, to have pity. It means to be sympathetic. It means to be moved in your heart. It's a heart issue. It's a heart experience. It's a heart moving, a heart feeling. It's a very strong term, moved with compassion. I think it's perhaps best illustrated from an Old Testament incident that's recorded in 1 Kings 3. You needn't turn to this because you'll know this very well. Solomon has been just made the king of Israel, and he has prayed for wisdom. And he's not king very long when he's faced with a case that demands the exercising of great wisdom. Two women come to his court. Both of them had given birth to a child, but one of the infants had died, and they were both claiming the living child as their own. Only one of those women was the true mother. But both of them were claiming the child. The other woman was a deceiver who simply claimed to be the mother. So Solomon is faced with this great dilemma. How to determine which one was the true mother? How to determine who was telling the truth? So Solomon calls for a sword. And he moves as if he's going to divide the living child in two. And as the sword is brought, the child's real mother intervenes. In verse 26 of 1 Kings chapter 3 we read, Then spake the woman whose living child was unto the king for her bowels, yearned upon her son. And she said, O my Lord, give her the living child, and I know I slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. And it's very clear from what happens there who the real mother was. It was the woman who yearned, whose bowels yearned upon her son. She was moved with compassion. The other woman couldn't face, the real mother couldn't face the death of her child. The other woman didn't care. She faced the possibility that the child was going to be cut in two with cold and calculated carelessness. There wasn't the slightest emotion of this, a single tear, no heart-wrenching feeling of sympathy or pity or concern, but the true mother She couldn't contain her anguish. She couldn't contain herself at the thought of the death of her little one, her bowels yearned within her. It's the same thought here when we read that Christ was moved with compassion. The sight of these people, spiritually, like sheep without a shepherd, falling, fainting, dying in their sin. with an empty religion that could never satisfy their souls and never bring peace into their hearts or deal with their sin. As Christ sees that, it greatly affected him. And he was moved with compassion. Our Lord could not look upon them and not be moved. He could not understand their plight and not feel pity for them. He could not look at their spiritual state and not have compassion on them. There they were like sheep wandering away from God without hope, without pardon. discovering that the world had not enough substance to offer them, learning that life was full of vanity and vexation of spirit, and Christ yearned over them, troubled. Christ had compassion on them because he understood the destructive nature of sin. Our Lord knows that sin robs a man or woman of his dignity. It means he has no peace, he has no hope, he has no joy. Our Lord knows that sin makes man worse than the beast of the field. He knows that sin brings a man low. He knows that sin will destroy that man, destroy that man's family, and destroy every aspect of that man's life. Christ had compassion on them because of the destructive nature of sin. He had compassion on them because they had no hope in and of themselves. Christ knew these people couldn't save themselves. They could never rescue themselves from their own depravity. They couldn't do it. He'd compassion on them because their religion could not meet their great spiritual needs. Scribes and Pharisees were full of hypocrisy themselves. They were guilty of distorting God's law, guilty of despising God's Christ. They had no answer for the people. You see that in the account of the public and the Pharisee going up to the temple to pray. The Pharisee goes and prays that he was thanking God. He's not like other men. He wasn't an extortioner. He wasn't an adulterer. He paid his tithe and he fasted twice a week and everything was fine as far as he was concerned. He was not even like the publicans that had come in. The Pharisees had no message for the people. Christ had compassion on that multitude because their own false religion could never meet their needs. Christ had compassion on them too because they misjudged the gospel. You think of the scene that's painted here. Christ was close by him, by them, but they were refusing Christ. Christ was weeping over Jerusalem. He said, I would have gathered you as a hen gathered her brood, but you would not. Christ had compassion because they were misjudging the gospel and rejecting him. He had a true, perfect, sin-hating compassion for these people. And believer, that's something we need to have. There's something I think we need to note here from these verses, and it is that The words are speaking of Christ having compassion but they don't include his disciples. You see the disciples are here too. We know that from verse 37 because Christ speaks to them. But it says when he saw the multitudes he was moved with compassion on them. There's no reference to the disciples having compassion. They saw the same people. They saw the same multitude fainting and falling before the Lord, but the Holy Spirit only speaks of Christ. It seems that our Lord's disciples were not moved as he was. Why was that? Were they preoccupied with something else? Were they just too weary? Were they filled with selfishness? We're not told. Given any number of things, what is sure is that we're often in the same state. We don't have the tenderness that Christ had. We're so often unlike. Alexander McLaren once said, the right emotion for a Christian looking on the Christless crowd is pity, not aversion, pity, not anger, pity, not curiosity, pity, not indifference. But is it not too often? that there is a crippling spirit, not the love for souls that there ought to be. True love for sinners does not mean comforting that sinner in his sin. It means doing all we can under God to win them for Christ was delivered from that. We live in a world where people think we only must speak of love. But Ephesians 4.13 tells us to speak the truth. And it's not compassionate to pat a sinner on the back and say, keep on going the way you are. It is compassionate to tell the sinner of Christ who's made it, that he must repent and believe the gospel. We need a compassionate heart. That means drawing alongside the other. That means perhaps getting outside our comforts. That means going the second man. That means seeking to establish friendships with the unseen. That we might have opportunity to speak to them of the Lord. Encourage them in under the sound of the gospel. It seems that not so many years ago you could have gone round an area and just dropped in leafless to doors and announcing special services and people would come in. That day's long gone. Now we must draw alongside people and take an interest in them and seek to encourage them along, bring them along, meet with them throughout the week, keep in touch with them, show an interest in them, have a heart for them. When Jonah was commanded to go and preach in Nineveh, he fled in the opposite direction. All kinds of political things going on in Jonah's mind. Could it be sometimes we're more like Jonah than we are like Christ, that are compassionate? I know that takes us outside our comfort zone. But when Peter was told in Acts 10 to go and speak to Cornelius, it took him outside his comfort zone. For a Jew to enter into a home of a Gentile is a huge step. But the Lord had called him, and the Lord gave him grace. Believer, let us for a tender Christ. The boys and girls that we want, the children that come into our children's work, our Sunday schools, and our young people, they're lost sheep on the road to a lost eternity. We might be the only people they ever come into contact to have the message of God give us compassion. There's a great tragedy here. There's a great tenderness here. There's a great task here as well. What does this mean for us? What we read in verse 35 and verse 36, this tragedy, this tenderness that we see, what does it mean for us sitting in this service tonight as we think about a soul winners convention and about the needs across our own country? It doesn't mean that we comfort sinners in their sin. It doesn't mean we ignore them. It doesn't mean we act like the priest and the Levi The Levite in the parable of Good Samaritan looked the other way. It doesn't mean we give up on sinners. It means we are to be moved to the depth of our being to think of what their sin is doing to them and do everything we can to see them sealed from that sin we set out as God enables us to rescue the perishing and to care for the dying. Look what Christ did in the verses that follow. Look at verse 37. Then said he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. We pray you, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth laborers into his harvest. Then verse 1 of chapter 10. And when he had called unto him his twelve disciples, he gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Verse 5, These twelve Jesus sent forth and commanded them, saying, Go not into the way of the Gentiles and into any city of the Samaritans. Enter ye not, but rather go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Two things here. He tells them to pray. Verse 37, verse 38, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labors are few. Pray ye therefore. That's something we can all do. We can pray. We can pray for those in our families who are not saved. We can pray for those who come into our church services who are not saved. But let us pray that God gives us opportunities to speak to the uns and gives us grace to seize those. You think in the course of a day and many people you meet who have We can pray that God gives us the grace to use those opportunities to seek to win them. Sometimes we pray, Lord give us opportunities and all the time the Lord has given us them, we've just not taken them. And then we are to preach. He sent his disciples out. The church of Jesus Christ needs men and women sent of God to take the message of the cross to needy souls. We've looked at Mexico. I mentioned Kenya. We have needs across all our mission fields, right? We need young men, you know, who are sentimental. They will pray and say from the depths of their heart, here am I. The prayer that Christ teaches us to pray is that he would send forth laborers. Gospel work, gospel missionary work, gospel ministry work is a labor. It's hard. We are to pray that God raises up men and we are to preach. This is not just for ministers and missionaries. We talk about full-time workers. In Acts chapter 8, you discover the church, under a time of persecution, was scattered from Jerusalem. They went everywhere preaching the word. These were the rank and file members of the church. The apostles stayed in Jerusalem. The congregations were scattered. They went as far as Antioch, and a congregation was formed there. They took the word with them. They just preached the word. There's a work to do. May God give us grace to do. David Brainerd, a missionary to the American Indians, once said this. I cared not where or how I live, or what hardships I went through, so that I could gain souls to Christ. While I was asleep, I dreamed of these things, and when I awaked, the first thing I thought of was this great work. All my desire was for the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God. As one said of Joseph Alain, who authored a tremendous book entitled An Alarm to the Unconverted, he said he was infinitely and insatiably greedy of the conversion of souls, and to this end he poured out his very heart in prayer. Matthew Henry, the great commentator said, I would think it a greater happiness to gain one soul to Christ than mountains of silver and gold. Samuel Rutherford said that if one soul would meet him in heaven from Anwith where he ministered in Scotland, if one soul, his heaven would be two. They say of David Brainerd, that he would go out into the depths of the snow and such was the fervency of his prayer that the snow melted around and he sweated in for the salvation. I'm not asking you that question without asking myself the same question. When's the last time we deliberately went out of our way to speak a word for Christ? When's the last time we invited someone? I better still went and brought someone in with us into the house of God. When's the last time we prayed? Earnestly prayed. May God move my heart. May God move all our hearts. All stirs in need of a revival. Revival doesn't start with the unconverted. May God stir. Christ, let's begin. Lord, make me.