But to begin, why is it, how did this man from Smith Mountain Lake, Virginia, down south, end up in Japan, marrying this lady, and now serving the Lord Jesus as our master in the work that he is doing there? Well, to begin, it starts with the promises of God. This passage here in Isaiah 24, I don't know how often you get into the prophets. I find them difficult to read sometimes, understand what the Lord was seeking to communicate there. But right here in Isaiah 24, you find one of the most moving, powerful messages about the coming judgment of the Lord on the entire earth. And it was as I was reading through this passage, living there in Japan, working there in Japan in the early days, that God gave me this verse from Isaiah 24. And you read that, it's like, whoa, the whole earth is being shook up. And right there in the middle of this passage is this hallelujah chorus. And it's these words here. They raise their voices, they shout for joy from the West, therefore in the East, Give glory to the Lord. Exalt the name of the Lord in the ESV, in the coastlines of the sea, in the islands of the sea. From the ends of the earth, we hear singing, glory to the righteous one. I'll be very honest with you. As we have lived and worked in Japan, surrounded by millions, lost, knowing that pretty much everyone around you is lost. He gets tired. Lord, how, through this temple, through this life, how will you use us to reach all these people? Then our eyes have to be called away from ourselves to remember that this is God. He is the Lord of the harvest. He is the one that is calling people to himself. And from the ends of the earth, the word of God tells us what? In every place, even in the islands and the coastlines of the sea, there will be declaration of praise and worship, glory to the righteous one. So this is the only thing that will keep us there. The fact that our God is calling people out to himself in every place. The worship that's due his name. Yoko and I, as Leon was just sharing, started there together. I had been in her city. And to give you a little more background, Yoko would like to share her testimony with you. of exactly what God did in bringing her to himself. My mother, who grew up as a daughter of a Buddhist priest, was the first in my family line to believe in Christ, ending thousands of years of spiritual blindness. She struggled with loving my sister, who was born with a learning disability, Then she began searching for answers among the different religions. Finally, she attended the home Bible study. Though she wasn't Christian, she started a study in her house for ladies in our neighborhood. Just like Lydia's prayer group in the Book of Acts, God sent a missionary to explain the gospel to her. She and those other ladies put their trust in Christ, and the church started in my neighborhood. I came to Christ during my sophomore year of college. I knew the difference Christ had made in my mother's life and in my sister's life. I used to compare myself to my sister and look down on her. But at the summer camp during college, God showed me my sins and that I have been prideful. I thought that I should die. But God forgave all my sins through Jesus Christ and gave me a new life in Him. I want you to try to get your hearts wrapped around the miracle that stands here. All of us are a miracle, are we not? When God brings us into his family, we're all a miracle. But we're talking about thousands of years, no one in her family line, her mother growing up on a Buddhist temple, in the temple grounds there, her grandfather being a Buddhist priest, dying at an early age of a heart attack, grandmother taking over being the priestess for the temple, and her mother going against everything that's Japanese, and following the Lord Jesus, and through the missionary, pioneer's missionary, coming to the neighborhood, finds what we would typically think in the Book of Acts, you know about Lydia? finds a little Bible study going on, but they don't know the whole Gospel. And so the missionary comes, the whole Gospel, and her mother comes to faith, and a radiant faith. A radiant faith, maybe about three years, burning brightly, and then the Lord took her home. But out of that grew a strong church, began there. And my wife became a believer through the witness of her mom, through the witness of others, through her sister. When they lost a child, they have been believers, singing praises to the Lord in the midst of brokenness. The very sister that she looked down upon, God's amazing grace. But the story doesn't end there. And there's more to tell you in just a little bit about how God continued that work. But I had been in that city about five years. I arrived there five years after the church got started. I was teaching in the public school systems with the Japanese teachers, and working in that church with the Pioneers missionaries. I didn't know anything about Pioneers before getting there. All I knew is that Jesus wanted me there, and he brought me to Japan, gave me a way to live and share the gospel. And while there, Ryoko moved back from Tokyo, and we met in the church. We did children's ministry together. You want to know a perfect recipe for romance? Work with kids together, okay? You learn a whole lot about each other. And I had to learn a lot of Japanese real quick because those Japanese kids could figure out very quickly what wasn't right with my Japanese. So I had a lot of help there, but in 1998, we began together. I had finished my contract with the school system. joined in with pioneers. We actually left Japan to go back through missionary orientation and came back to serve full-time together as a new couple and as new missionaries in her hometown. Why Japan? Many people have not known, and still today do not know, that Japan, the Japanese people, are the second largest unreached people group in the world. Our image of Japan, the way we often think of missions, is the places where it's hard, the jungles, unreached people groups. You've got to tear down with machetes to get to them. They're unreached. But what about this land that seems to be together and kind and peaceful? Lost. Broken. As you see there, Moving ahead here, the Kyushu Island, the southernmost area where we're located in southern Japan there, 13 million, as Leon shared, 99.9% are lost, and less than 200 missionaries are in that area. Now, I want you to consider with me. By the way, I'm hanging onto her here, OK? Because she has another important part of this story I want you guys to hear. What has happened in the last few years in Japan? What has been on the screen? I know in North Korea, in recent days, politics has been on the screen. But what you know about is the devastation through the disasters ahead. Now, I want you to consider in 2011, the last time we were here, when Susanna got her fever, in March of that year, actually the very end of February, My father died in a sudden accident, a bicycle accident. And I got the call. We were preparing, just a couple of months later, to be back here in the States. We moved things up. We went home to work with my mom, help the moms and do the changes. We were only back just a couple of weeks when the tsunami and earthquake hit in northern Japan. And of course, my heart's breaking. Our hearts are just, we're grieving. We're grieving. And our home church there calls us and says, will you come lead our church? Help us to pray for the Japanese. And we prayed and we wept. And the whole church was praying for Japan. Praying for northern Japan. You're about to find out that last year, and you've probably read me praying, There was another major earthquake in southern Japan. And the world's been praying. Though we don't understand why all things happen, I do know this. There's very few workers and very few believers in northern and southern Japan. And God is raising up workers for those areas. We have seen an incredible influx of people interested, praying, preparing to come to Japan. And we know that our sovereign God has moved in the hearts of his people to pray, and he is answering. We join with Pioneers. Pioneers is a rapidly growing organization. It's got 3,122 members right now worldwide, very decentralized. People, they're coming from everywhere over the world. God is sending them. We're grateful to be part of that. We're working with Kurume Bible Church, which is a bedroom community of Fukuoka, Kitakyushu area. Fukuoka is the fifth largest city in Japan. More than 1.5 million combined with Kitakyushu is approaching 3 million. We are in Kurume there, which is about 300,000, working with a Japanese pastor. And what has God done the past two years in answer to prayer? Well, on the top left, you will see a picture of someone very precious to our family. It's Yoko's father. Huge answer to prayer. And Yoko, what was it that happened there? When we got home and went back to Japan, I tried to contact my father. I'm home. But he didn't answer. And I kept calling to him. And then two months, no one answered the phone. And I felt very strange. And I called to my neighbor, not my father's neighbor. said, my father is a gardener, but the garden never had the grass, weeds, but there is so much weed there, and then it seems like your father is not around the house. So we talked about... What's going on with that? And again, we tried to visit with them, and we got there. Of course, no one was there. We asked the neighbors, and they informed us that he was probably in this hospital. So we went to the hospital. My father surprised to see us. I was a little bit upset. Why didn't you call me? But he... He was happy to see us. And then he didn't want me to say anything about his sickness. And then... In Japan, when it comes to a terminal illness, often they will request, even the family, if you find out you have a terminal illness, please don't tell me. Don't tell me I have the terminal illness. And often they will not share with others what's going on. So I asked the doctor, his doctor, and the doctor told me what's going on, and I connected with my sister, and we started talking about the death, and then the funeral, and we talked about it. Yeah. And he turned to me and he said, oh, Brian, do you think that we can I can actually get into, and of course this sounds funny, but get into the church gravesite. Because when her mother passed away at the beginnings of Shimonoseki Christ and Bible Church there, she and her husband there donated what would have been the family gravesite to the church. And so all the Christians, of course, that's very important in Japan because they do not want those that follow after them to bow down in ancestor worship to the spirits. Their spirits that have gone on have been deified. And so right there you get a cross on the gravesite, and I am the resurrection and the life, whoever believes in me. It's right there. And so what do we have? We have Him asking, can I be in that gravesite? And I turn to Him and I say, well, I don't think that'll be a problem. But the more important question is, are you in Christ? Are you in Christ? Because getting to that gravesite means nothing unless you are in Him. And God had been working. as always is the case, behind the scenes in a lot of ways. So when we turned to him, I just asked him and said, so do you, do you believe that you are a great sinner in your creator's sight? And he said, yes. Do you believe that you deserve to go to hell? More affirmative. Yes. Wow. This guy, he said he believed kind of in Creator God, but for him to start admitting, humbling himself and saying, and then I asked him, do you believe that Christ died for the forgiveness of your sins and that he rose from the dead? Yes. We were overwhelmed. We were totally overwhelmed as he revealed where his heart was. And so we didn't quite have a traditional celebration there. I mean, it was a little bit of dancing and excitement. But there, we didn't have a full baptism. We had a little more like a foot washing, because we couldn't get him totally in there. But we had a foot washing celebration, a full baptism there to celebrate. that his faith had been in Christ. And he shared with us where God had been working his heart all this time. He shared after we found out he believed in Christ. He shared with us, he read the Bible twice, and then he went with one of our girls, two, three years old, and he took child to the park, neighborhood park. And then there is a small little square, you know, a triangle shape of the park. And just a swing was there. But that day, they found a new slide. And then my father said to the daughter, my daughter, look, they have a new slide. Someone put it for you. And then my daughter said, no, no, no. God prepared everything for us. And then my father thought, even this little child knows God, Creator. But I don't know. So that's before. So again, just a reminder, we have found that over and over again. You know, when we have the celebration of someone coming to faith and the work of God's Spirit and bringing them into God's family and giving them a new heart and a new life, when we hear the story of all the ways, I mean, we're surprised. God has been working for a long time. And the one thing that we've always learned is that all of us really are short-term missionaries. All of us. The true long-term missionary is the Lord Himself. And we're all being part of his work and the harvest of bringing many into his family. These past two years, Guy did many other things. You see on the top right there a name by the name of Tetsuya. When we hit the ground back there in Japan two years ago, We had a group of three gals straight out of high school. Some of you, I think, do homeschooling here. They had been homeschooled, all three of them. And they wanted to take a gap year to be involved in God's work throughout the world. And so they traveled a whole year, going many different places, and we were the last stop. So we got them. They had been primed. They had experienced a lot of God. And they got there. It was amazing. Two months with us. I went to school with Sarah. Sarah was finishing up her time at the elementary school right there in our neighborhood. While we were there, walked in for orientation day, I walk in with Sarah. I'm the only guy. All these other... I'm the only guy there where I'm going to sit down. And I'm led to sit down in front of this lady by the name of Kamazawa-san. She has these two young girls. They had just moved from Hokkaido. They are part of the self-defense forces. Her husband teaches in the academy, which is located in our city. So I think there's a little bit of military around these parts here in Virginia, northern Virginia. Krumme, where we live, has a lot of the military there as well. So as you pray, be praying for ministry to the people that God's given us. But the Kamazawa family, right there with that first meet with Naoko-san, she was just so talkative. I mean, it's sometimes hard to begin communicating with people. She was very open. We invited her. We knew we had these three ladies to be teaching English. She was there the next Sunday. She was there like, I'm not Christian. I'm Buddhist. Is it OK for me to be here? I'm like, oh, yeah. No problem with that. Yes, you're definitely welcome here. And they were so involved. So many other friends came. A wonderful class. And out of that grew this Bible study. Right as they prepared to go back, Yoko invited the ladies to get into a Bible study. And they came. And they heard, where they studied the Word of God together. And out of that, in the bottom left corner there, you see Naoko-san, who put her trust in Christ, and was baptized in the middle of a typhoon-raging river there. We have a river. I mean, it was like we thought they were going to get washed away that day, fully. But we had an incredible celebration there. You also see there on from the right bottom, you see. Udiér, who also grew up in a church and was baptized that day. But Tetsuya, there at the beginning, he was a guy that someone in the church was reaching out to. Many, including those ladies, reached out to him. He is now a believer and training in Hungary. to be a research doctor, I don't even understand all that he's doing there, hoping to come back. But he wanted to follow the Lord and continue following Him there in Hungary before leaving Japan. So we praise the Lord for those souls that he brought. And right now we have five to six, we can't figure this out, five to six teachers, five to six teachers that are coming pretty much every week to hear the gospel and to meet with the Christians there in our church. And we thank the Lord that he's drawing these people to himself. April 16, 2016, southern Japan. We were in the leadership training the past three years. The Lord used us to lead the Fukuoka team. And when we were there in Hong Kong going through the leadership training, I picked up my cell phone and was able to make the first Wi-Fi connection and call back to talk to my family. And as we, and my girls were back there, our teammate Stephanie was watching our girls, and as soon as it connected, the phone went off. Earthquake. So, I finally get in touch with Stephanie I said, Stephanie, there was an earthquake. She said, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was moving. It was moving, and all the girls are awake now. And we're having a party, is what she said. Major party time. And of course, I don't think they got much sleep that night. We had one story of there was another tremor that came, and the girls went running downstairs again. And Stephanie said, ah! I want to say that that was a small one. You can go back to bed now. But these earthquakes, these tremors kept coming. And I kept getting these warning things. What is this? And so we went and got together with our fellow teammates. And we got there, and we prayed together. This is not normal. And sure enough, there was a major earthquake that hit Africa. But what has God done in the past couple of years? I want you to listen to what God has done through the believers, though few, as they have reached out to their neighbors there in Kumamoto. I don't know what I'm going to do. foreign foreign I saw the volunteers coming from all over the country, and I was so relieved to see them. Since last April, volunteers from Kyushu Kirishitsu Saigara Support Center have been coming to Japan from all over the world. Currently, there are about 5,100 volunteers, and they are doing a lot of volunteer work. from all over the world working through the churches there. The amazing thing that came out of that is God's people served the people there. They started calling other people who called for help. And you know how they called for them? In Japanese, kirishita-san, kirishita-san. San is the honorific phrase for like our mister or missus. So they're saying, Mr. Christ, Mrs. Christ, would you come over and help us over here? So as God's people have been serving, that has been their response. They see them living out as Christians before God's people there. And the relief works continue for over a year now. We're in the temporary housing, working with the people that live there, with the children. Our girls, we've been doing some programs. We're doing programs there with the children. And getting them to come out is still traumatic, what happened there. And now we're able to share more and more of the gospel with the people. Edge workers or several workers came. This couple here, our neighbors, boss, Tapia and Neguni, right now they're also, they're there at the church with the believers more than some of the other members are. But the wife has made a profession in Christ. We're watching to see her growth in grace. And also we have a Korean short-term worker. We're very close to Korea. And also we've had another gentleman from Florida that came. This lady, Terasaki-san, she's in her 80s. She travels over an hour. taking buses and all to come be with us. God's reaching also the elderly. As you know, Japan has some of the oldest people in the world, but God is still reaching many of them with the gospel. Starting with the Fukuoka team there, one of the things that God led our team to do, they've been planting a church there, Fukuoka Bible Church, about nine years now. Brand new church, working with Inoue Sensei, They just got a building, and now they've got about 30 believers that are meeting in that area. The average church size in Japan is anywhere between 30 to 35 believers. Larger churches, of course, in Tokyo, Osaka, the bigger cities like that. But that's the average size. Our team, a couple of years ago, realized in order to do church planning well, we needed for the new people coming in to have a place to be trained to adjust to life in ministry. Those first two years were challenging, upheaval. Imagine, I still remember the first time going down. I had never really in the U.S. taken buses or trains. And I walked down and I'm standing in front of this bus stop. I can't read a thing. And I've got 30 minutes. I'm supposed to get a bus and go across town to meet with the principal. You talk about feeling like a little kid. I'm having to bang on the doors of the bus and try to say the name of where this place is, and them going, no, like that, and be stepping back and waiting for the next bus. I mean, what a way to try to do life. But that's what it's like so much for many people first coming to Japan. So we pray, God, would you give us a program, a place, a team, that that would be their focus. God gave the vision for that. But we weren't the ones to do it. So we had to pray for the workers for it. Well, God led our area leader. He saw what our team was working on. He said, this fits. This is what God has put on our heart. So just this past fall, the launch team began. You see it where in the red shirt there in the right? That is Scott Murray, our area leader. They moved from Hiroshima to come down and take on this ministry. And so with six brand new workers, the very thing we were sharing with the church as the last time we came through, pray for six. God gave them. This first cohort is going through. There are 20 more workers in the pipeline right now coming. That's just with pioneers. God has been answering prayer for workers. Our focus the next six years will be discipling our girls. This is our two girls. They'll be off to university here soon. very important years, pray with us that we would listen to the Lord, grow in grace together, focusing more on basic discipleship within the churches, mobilizing these summer workers, even gap year workers, that God is using them, and then facilitating prayer walks and Bible studies in the unreached towns and villages. why those towns and villages, why our area is surrounded by them. If you notice, there's four distinct Japans, there's the mega cities, the Tokyo, Osaka, all those 27 million in those 12 cities. But if you look in the yellow there, the rural areas, the towns and villages, there's 34 million. So what would the Lord desire for these areas? You see those light areas, the light gray, all of those areas have no Christian witness whatsoever. And so we're praying, God, what would you do? What is your desire to do in those areas? So would you pray with me right now as we ask the Lord how he desires for us to reach those areas and hear from his word? Lord, we come to you, the Lord of the harvest. And we ask that right now, as we have heard about what you are already doing, Lord Jesus, bringing many into your family, for those for whom you died, you're bringing them into your family. We pray that right now, that by the Holy Spirit, you would call even more to yourself, and that you would communicate your heart to us, that we may be obedient to you, and experience the greatness and glory of our God. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Here in Matthew, Matthew 9, starting in verse 35. We'll read from Matthew 9, starting from verse 35. And reading through to the next chapter, to verse 5. What we're looking at today, we are looking at Jesus. Jesus, if we do anything else and we miss Christ in the scriptures, Jesus told us that we've missed the whole message. You read these scriptures to find about life, but these are the scriptures that tell of me. These are about me. And we're going to learn about Christ today, Jesus in His missionary heart, and His ability to change us so that we become a part of what He is already doing in God's incredible Kingdom work, building His church, a great harvest of souls. So starting in verse 35, we read, Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. 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. Jesus summoned his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Now the name of the twelve apostles are these, the first Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, and James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James the son of Alpheus and Thaddeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed him. These twelve Jesus sent out after instructing them, do not go in the way of the Gentiles and do not enter any city of the Samaritans. And we'll stop there. When we look at this passage, probably one that you've heard before, probably even memorized before, we must not miss the Lord of the Harvest. If we look at Jesus, what is He actually doing? What is the missionary heart? What God sent His Son into this world? Galatians tells us the time was right. In God's perfect plan, He came. And we know that among God's people, for thousands of years in Israel, God had revealed that yes, they were His people, but they were a people greatly in need of a new heart, greatly in need of a king and a priest and a prophet. that true Messiah, God Himself, to rescue them. And history repeated itself over and over again, even after they were taken out of their land, after the prophets had warned them, or what God had told them thousands of years before, that this would happen to them. And they come back. It's not long, and they're falling back into sin again, wandering away. And the Roman Empire comes and takes over and they're under bondage and burden. At that right time, God sends His Son. And Jesus clearly, He always knew why He was here. I have come. He always clearly said, I have come that I might give my life, give it as a ransom for many I've come to seek and to save that which was lost." The Son of God knew why He was sent. He knew His mission. But we see in this passage, we see that Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Jesus' mission, He was going about. Before Jesus said the Great Commission, He had lived the Great Commission. And He had been teaching and evangelizing and healing. God's heart was to take the good news, the message of Himself. Jesus said, the time is here, the time is at hand. The good news is here. I am here. God's kingdom is at hand. And so he was going about not doing what the missionary statistics and researches said, just going to the city where you could have the greatest. No, he was going into every place, into the towns and villages, and he was proclaiming the good news and teaching in their synagogues. And he was displaying the compassion and mercy of our God, even to those that were ill and sick. And as we shared with you, That's true. We are surrounded with towns and villages that need to hear the message that our God has come in the person of his Son. And there is much good news for us. Good news for what kinds of people? It says in Matthew 36 through 37, seeing the people, he felt compassion for them. Seeing the people, Seeing the crowds, seeing the multitudes. I don't know what you guys feel like around here, but we just a couple of weeks ago were up in Tokyo. And we got on one of those trains that you've probably seen some documentaries about or something, where they take and they push everybody onto the train. I mean, I've never been down to Shibuya before, but I mean, we were on that train, and I'm feeling strange because they're about this height, and I'm a little bit taller, and I'm just kind of looking on top of their heads, and everybody's got to do their hands just right, because if you have them down here, you may be considered you're doing something funny. So everybody's got your hands up here, just like this, okay? And I'm like, I'm looking, we're stopping another stop, and I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. They're going to put more on here? We're just like, how are we going to get off of this thing? Crowds. Millions. 99% lost. All of them. Don't notice anything. Jesus looked upon the crowds and what did Jesus see? What do you and I see? Are we seeing? Are we actually seeing? I tell you what my problem is, I don't know if you guys have, actually I can't find it right now because my battery ran out, but you know that cell phone, that smart phone? When I look around me, you know what I'm seeing and most people are seeing? This is what we're seeing, and of course probably the kids are like, you have to do this, you have to talk about our smart phones. We don't see. We see a bunch of ourselves. But do we see what Jesus sees? Brothers and sisters, I prayed for myself. May our love in these last days not become cold. See, Jesus saw the people and He was moved with compassion. Are you and I moved? Have we moved? We need to pray for ourselves that God would give us His eyes to see what He sees. And what He sees is this. The Word of God tells us that He saw these people as distressed and dispirited. Now, you can look at all the different translations. They've been having a time with trying to get these words right. Distressed, dispirited. In the New King James Version, you have weak and scattered. You have, here in the ESV, you have harassed and helpless. Well, the words basically come down to this. Distressed is being flailed. Beat up. Knocked down. abused. That's when Jesus looked upon those sheep. That's how He saw them, right? Like sheep beaten up, worn out, flailed. And this helpless or scattered. The word there in the previous passage was talking about the demoniac. When they brought him up, he was thrown down to the ground. That's the same word there. Thrown down. Cast down. Jesus looked upon them and they're just, they're just like litter. They're just like litter, thrown down, beaten up, abused. Why? No shepherd. See, Jesus, He sees mankind's true condition. We, on our own, Turning to mankind turning to other things For hope rather than turning to the Good Shepherd How does it end up the consequence is that we are sheep that are beaten up? worn out Thrown down Are any of you do you know that what's your testimony believer? Do you boast in Jesus? Do you boast as one that without Jesus, you're just saying, I'm weak? I mean, last night, my daughter's, I don't know what was up with her phone, but last night, her phone battery was going dead, and the alarm went off. And the alarm, I couldn't shut it off. So there I'm at Leon's house, I'm stuffing in the pillows, trying to cover this up. Thing's beeping all night long, okay. I woke up this morning, oh boy, okay. Philly, I'm weak. But he's not talking about that. He's talking about our souls, not just our bodies. We're lost without Christ. We're lost. We're beat up. And even in this day, as Jesus knew in his day, there are shepherds that are beating up their own sheep. Do we see ourselves as Christ sees us? Do we see our need to turn to the only shepherd of our souls that can give us life, that can raise us up and give us strength by making us new creations? Is this your testimony, or do you need to turn to the good shepherd of our souls today? Right now, my wife and I, we're studying counseling, biblical counseling as well, because don't let the Japanese fool you. They're beat up, flailed, thrown down. Families are a mess. Suicide. More than 30,000 every year. Even in our city, every week, a suicide. Constant, constant emptiness without hope. What else do we learn from the Lord Jesus? He says that they're without a shepherd, but he makes it very clear, the harvest is plentiful. workers are few. That's what he sees. He knows, even when he looks out, he's not without hope. He knows that the harvest is there. He knows there's a harvest because God is the owner of that harvest. God is not up there trying to figure out what to do. He is the Lord of the harvest, but he knows the workers are few. And so Jesus turns to his disciples. And he says to them, therefore, because this is our true condition, because the harvest is plentiful, beseech, petition, plead, beg the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest. And that is what we must respond. That's our first response. the response, what does Jesus, does Jesus come and say, well, you know, if you guys could use this new technology and get all the gospel on the Internet, then we can reach the harvest. Where does Jesus, where does he turn us first? To our needs. You're not the Lord of the harvest. This is too big for you, but not for my Father. Not for the Lord of the Harvest. Cry out, plead, beseech, petition the Lord of the Harvest to send forth workers. Remind you of Elijah. It's just me. It's just me. It's just me and Israel. Nobody else is following the Lord. Poor me. I've sounded like that some days. You ever felt that way? Just poor old me, Lord. You can use me. Get on our knees. because God is going to send forth workers. It better not be just us. He's commanded us. He's commanded us. This is the right response to what Jesus sees. To plead and ask. But it doesn't stop there. I love what happens here. Sometimes we get stopped at our chapters, but they weren't there in the scrolls. They didn't have those chapters and verses, right? As we move on, what happens? Jesus summoned, called His 12 disciples, and He gave them authority. He gave them authority. He empowered them, and then He sends them out. Do you see the dangerous thing that happens if we obey the Lord Jesus? And I'm saying dangerous thing. You start praying for workers. You better be ready because it doesn't stop there. When we start praying, it automatically means anytime we pray, God's Spirit is lining us up with His heart. His Spirit is going to fill us and move us out. Now, just in case you You're thinking maybe well Brian, you may be misusing this passage here. Okay, just this is the apostles, right? Jesus sent apostles, right? Sent out the apostles. Well, if you go over in Luke and check out the Latin this other time when Jesus was looking upon the crowds, you know what he did? He sent out the 70. He sent out the 70. Jesus is always sending out everyone that belongs to Him. We pray, we beseech, and He sends out workers, including us. But why can you do it when you look around you and you're asking God to work in this powerful way and send out workers? Why can you and I go out there and truly testify to the Lord Jesus Christ? Because, what does the Scripture say? He gave them a heart. Now who can tell me the Great Commission? Love, can I put you on the spot? How does it begin, the Great Commission? Go ye therefore, go ye therefore. That is right. That's usually how we hear it, right? That's how we hear it. That's exactly right. But that is not the Great Commission. What? Is that missionary okay up there? What's the Great Commission? Make disciples. Okay. We're there. That's right. We're getting really close. Everybody take your Bibles real quick. Just kind of move on ahead here, Matthew, real quick here to the very end of that Great Commission. And what do we see there in chapter 28? Everybody's kind of looking. This has got to be a trick question. I just don't like when missionaries give trick questions. No, no, no. Let's look here, okay? We cannot miss this, brothers and sisters. The Great Commission really starts before verse 19. Because what we see is the text, the narrative in verse 17, and when they saw Him, they worshipped Him, but some doubted. And then Jesus came and said to them, Here comes the Word from Jesus. Here comes the Great Commission. And the Word is what? All authority! All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. I have won the victory. I am your Messiah. God has appointed me and he has given me the authority. Therefore, therefore, therefore, as you're going, as you're going, make disciples. Brothers and sisters, this work, missions, everything this life is about until we get to heaven is because we have the Lord of the Harvest, Jesus Christ. And He has all authority. The reason why we can look at this 99% lost, and we know that through your prayers, that something's going to happen is not because the broadest family is there. He sent us out there because we're workers. We need workers, yes. But the reason it's going to happen is because all of our hearts in heaven and earth has been given to the Lord of the harvest. And He's going to send you, and He is sending you as you are going right here in this area of northern Japan, wherever you are. You have that authority. He gives you his authority and he sends you. And as you pray, even from this group, he will send some of you to Japan or to some other place. God's going to do it. So we must respond in obedience to Christ and pray and be ready for him to send us out. Let's go to the Lord of the Harvest right now in prayer and respond to what he has said to us this morning. As you have your heads bowed and as we seek the Lord's face, let's ask him together. Oh, Father, we want to give praise to you for what you have done. We want to give praise to You that You have sent Your Son and that You are rescuing people from every tongue, every language, every people group, that You are saving people and that we have the joy and privilege of knowing Your greatness as we ask You and ask You empower us to go. So I pray, Lord, that here among us, If there's anyone here that is still weak and scattered, helpless, harassed, distressed, that they would turn to the Good Shepherd today. Yes, that's the Gospel for us believers, that we would keep turning from ourselves and from shepherds that would beat us up, but to turn to You, the only One that can save our souls. And I also pray with my brothers and sisters here, Father, please, please send out more workers into your harvest. Yes, in Japan, but in every place. This church, Lord, multiply this church. Use them in every place that you're sending them. And we ask this for your glory in Jesus' name. Amen.