Luke 10:2 Therefore said he to them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest… I. CHRIST MEANT HIS SEVENTY DISCIPLES TO GO FORTH AND GATHER THAT WHICH HAD ALREADY GROWN AND RIPENED. 1. He saw a harvest of piety, for instance, waiting for Himself, and the proofs of His Messiahship. 2. I think He saw also another sort of harvest, or another element in that harvest — the moral element. There were many highly moral people living in the world who had become disgusted with religion and its priests. II. THE CHARACTER OF THE HARVEST-MEN HE EMPLOYED. It is at once painful and disheartening to perceive that He did not select, either as individuals or as a class, the professed teachers of religion, He employed no class of men as such. He dealt only with persons and their individual consciences, and so acting, it is easy to discover the sort of people He could call and use as His harvest-men. III. AS THESE WERE PEOPLE MORALLY AND SPIRITUALLY LIKE HIMSELF (TO SOME REAL EXTENT AT LEAST), HE WAS RESTRICTED GREATLY IN THE NUMBER OF GATHERERS, AS HE WAS RESTRICTED IN THE METHOD OF INGATHERING TO BE EMPLOYED. IV. I REMARK UPON THE MODE IN WHICH THE HARVEST WAS TO BE GATHERED. HOW were the pious and the moral to be brought in? I might properly answer, on a principle of natural selection. They were to preach the gospel of Christ, and illustrate, enforce, and commend that gospel by the beauty and perfectness of their own holy lives. They would thus become witnesses for God, as He was a witness for God. V. TAKE NOW THE PRACTICAL LESSON. Piety in you and me, who profess to be Christ's real friends, is to attract whatever piety we come in contact with. There is plenty of unattached piety waiting to be attracted by you and me. The Lord sent out twelve, then seventy. That great world-clasping system we call Christianity had once so few supporters and missionaries. Do you ask how many it wants now? I will tell you. It wants every man, woman, and child, into whose soul the grace of God has come, that every other life found in the vast field of human activity may be brought with a throb of love and a song of joy, s gathered ear all ripe and golden to the great Lord of the harvest of souls. (J. McDougall.) Parallel Verses KJV: Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest. |
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