Harassed and Helpless

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What a week it has been. What a week it has been.

I don't know, we're like 10 years into this church. I guess something like that. I don't know. I was public schooled, so I can't count past 10 homeschool, but I thoroughly have been on cloud nine from our feast of Trumpets celebration on Monday night. Just everybody who knows me knows I'm a yeller.

I just yell not because I'm angry. I don't really get angry a lot anymore. I used to get angry all the time, but I'm just passionate. I'm passionate about what I do, passionate about Jesus. I'm passionate about saving grace.

I feel like we should do everything with excellence. And so like, you know, I want to be passionate for my love for Jesus as much as I want to be passionate for my. My wrestles with Jesus. You know, it said Jacob wrestled with the angel. I believe Jacob wrestled with Jesus.

And ultimately he came out with that, what, limp in the hip, like, he like, ah. And so I want to be that passionate that even when I'm wrestling with the Lord, that the hip gets put out of place. And so today, stick with me. Last week we talked about demons. I know it's not comfortable.

If you think I sit at home and I'm like, oh, hey, let's just go through the book of Matthew for like 25 weeks so that at week 23 I can start talking about demons. Like, I don't have that kind of brain power. Like, you gotta be kidding me. And so today, harassed and helpless, we're gonna be in Matthew chapter nine, 35 through 38. I know that's a little bit provocative, but you will see later on as to why I chose that title.

Last week we looked at the mute man who had encountered Jesus, who was the living word, John. In our building blocks classes, Matthew and Isaac are going through that terminology. The Torah is not just the living word. Jesus is the living word. And encountered the word.

And Jesus had cast out the demon. And when Jesus cast out the demon that was choking the testimony of this man, the crowd had declared nothing in all of Israel had ever been seen like this. This was Matthew 9:33. And it's true, nothing in all of Israel had been seen. They had some great things in Israel.

They had parties, they had passovers, they had Red Sea moments, they had drownings, they had burning bushes. It wasn't like Israel didn't have a huge testimony. Israel had an amazing testimony of amazing things that happened. But nothing like this had been seen in all of Israel. Why?

Because this was the fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy that the mute would speak, that the mute would testify. Were we reminded of the sins that happen long before our fingers or our feet or our mouth does anything. You see, by the time it comes to our fingers or our hands or our walk or whatever, doing something, and we're like, oh, man, that man sinned. That man or that woman sinned long before the feet ever took a step, before the hands ever reached out and did anything, before the mouth ever spoke. Because sin starts in the mind and it starts in the heart, and it poisons and goes outward.

It takes root in your heart and it spills out in your words and your deeds. And we saw that the Pharisees had continuously looked for how they could find a loophole in the Torah to be Torah observant by the loophole, not the intention of the heart of God. The heart of God is that sin would not take root in your heart. The heart of God is that sin would not take root in your mind or in your emotions, that it would never start inward, so it wouldn't come outward. Demons don't shield us from sins.

They actually enslave us to sins. They suffocate our testimony and they drag us down towards destruction. Yet Jesus restores what the enemy steals. The Pharisees accused him of working by the power of Satan. Yet we know what narcissists do.

Whatever they're telling you that somebody else is doing, they're doing that. And so the reality was is that their false witness against Jesus was actually revealing the kingdom of darkness at hand with Jesus's kingdom of life. And Jesus miracles revealed the breaking in of the kingdom of God here and now. Demons rob your testimony and Jesus restores your testimony. And the fruit of that kingdom proves that he is Messiah.

Rejecting Jesus isn't silence, it's suicide.

This week we get into Matthew and he tells us in verse 35, Jesus had went through all the towns and the villages and he had taught in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and the healing of every disease.

I'm not my man dropped out of college to be in a band.

So Jesus went through all towns and all villages and into the synagogues. Okay, this is not like Oklahoma. This isn't like when you start driving down towards Louisiana. You got some Christian places, you've got some Native American, you've got some Indian reservations that are there. You've got some towns that have some Jesus lovers, and then you got some outlaws.

Duran Duran Rant Duran, you got all these towns. That's not what this is. This is Torah observant country. This is the country and the place where even the people who were not living a religious lifestyle or even were not following into a place of observance, they knew more about the Torah and, and the culture of the Torah than any of us in the room, including myself. This was ingrained in who they were.

So yet it says In Matthew, verse 35, it says that Jesus went through all the towns and the villages, teaching in their synagogue, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every sickness and disease. We know that through the previous 35 verses in Matthew chapter 9 and then the previous chapters that we've started in chapter eight, that the testimony of the crowds who had heard this Jewish Messiah speak, they were dumbfounded. Nothing that had ever been seen like this in all of Israel. There was a different authority, there was a different way he spoke. And it wasn't just because he was popular.

It wasn't just because he was eloquent. It was because he was the one that all the Torah and the prophets spoke of.

Jesus didn't stay in one region and he didn't cater to one group. He didn't come just so the Sadducees could feel like they were the righteous ones and the Pharisees were not. He didn't go out to Qumran and he did not hang out with the Essenes and elevate the Essenes. He didn't go into Galilee, he didn't go into Samaria and just hang out with one group. It says that he went through all the towns and all the villages, teaching in all of their synagogues.

That's pretty important because we like to think, coming from Christianity, that Judaism doesn't have any sects or any divisions amongst them. But even in this time, they did. So the Samaritans had a different religious thought process than the Pharisees. The Pharisees had a different one than the Sadducees. And then you've got those pagans out in the wood building their little tent out there with the Essenes, who thought they were the holiest people with the greatest Torah observance of all and that they were the most righteous.

And then we've talked about this multiple times. Who was the majority of the Israelites? Just regular folks trying to get through life. They just wanted to pull up to a Freddy's on the way back from Ardmore on the feast of tabernacle, and they just wanted a chocolate shake. They didn't want a cup full of frozen custard in a straw that you had to basically run an aircraft engine to pull the custard through.

They just wanted to shake. They're just trying to get by. And yet Freddy's decided to fill a cup with custard and hand somebody a spoon. Thank God my car drives itself.

But Jesus went everywhere. He went into different occupations. He went into different. The word that Brent likes to use a lot, Holocaust. A different way of walking.

You know, the Baptists have a holocaust. They have a way by which they interpret the Bible and walk out the Bible. The Pharisees had a halakah. They had a way by which they thought about the Bible and walked out the Bible. The Sadducees had a halakah.

The way they thought about the Bible and the way they walked out. Every family has a halakah. My family's halakah is not the same as your family's, I can promise you that. And that's okay. That's the beauty of the kingdom of God, is that it's not about uniformity.

Each one of you was made precious in the sight of the Lord with the differences that you have. Yet there was different occupations. You know, Rome gets a bad rap. You know, it's like everybody hates on the Catholics. It's like everything the Catholics has ever done that's wrong.

And yet we gloss over literally all the gospels where the Jews were found kind of in the same place with Jesus, even though he was talking to his own people. Yet there was Greeks, there was Assyrians, there was different occupations of worldly leadership in these different countrysides. It was just not the Romans. And I think that's important for us to remember when we're looking at who Jesus is talking to and why Jesus is doing what he's doing. Because ultimately that's our world today.

There's different occupations, there's different thought processes, there's different halakah, there's all of these things and there's beauty in all of those as long as it aligns with the Word through the power of the Word. Jesus Christ Jesus was laser focused with his mission. Teach, proclaim, heal. Why? Because his mission was to fulfill the Torah and the prophets.

Why was it? Was it so that we could go on and have rebellion in our heart? Rebellion was in our heart long before the Torah and the prophets. We get that in the garden. There was rebellion in our hearts before God gave the ten Commandments to Moses, let alone before Moses sat down and wrote his epistles to the Hebrews Rebellion was before, and rebellion still exists even after the Torah and the prophets.

It was to fulfill the Torah and the prophets because the Mashiach needed to embody every component of the Torah and the prophets. That's how you would know it. Is the Mashiach just like. It's very easy. I know this sounds really, really.

And I know I'm in Oklahoma, but you want to know how you can decipher the Antichrist? He does things different than the Bible. Why? Shocker. Because he's Antichrist.

All the books, like, all the timelines, all the things, it's pretty simple. How do you know Christ is the Christ? He does things that the Torah and the prophets said he would fulfill. How do you know that the Antichrist is the Antichrist? They do the opposite.

Michael, you have a family in the Stallsworth family. And so the Stallsworths have kind of a code. It's just kind of like, this is what makes a Stallsworth. And I don't know what that is. We can talk about that over Sukkot, but there's a code of what makes a Stallsworth.

And so then I come walking in and I'm like, hey, everybody, I'm a Stallsworth. I'm a Stallsworth. And they're like, that's awesome. And then I start doing random things on the stage, running back and forth. Well, yeah, I don't see Michael do that.

When he teaches. He's very calm and collected and very passionate without being somewhat schizophrenic on the stage. And then you're like, I don't think that guy's a Stallsworth. And then I'm like, hey, everybody, I don't believe in electrical work. You know, okay, he's not a Stallsworth.

And you go on and on and on, and all of a sudden you start to say, well, this is something that Michael and his family find beauty in. All of a sudden, I'm calling myself a Stallsworth, but I'm doing everything the opposite. And then somebody with wisdom and discernment would say, oh, yeah, he's a liar. He's not a Stalls. And that's how we know the Antichrist.

So he's a liar. He's not doing what the Torah and the prophets and the words of the Gospels have told us to do. He's a counterfeit.

This is important for us to understand, because everything in Matthew's Gospel is to prove and to record that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

The greater exodus, the exodus of sin and death. Not one we're going to Drive our Chevys through the lifeblood of the Jewish Messiah to bring all the 12 tribes in all of the nations. Oh, that was a part of the original plan too. Oh, yeah, that all the nations would be blessed. All of this testified to one.

And now Matthew's testifying. He's here. Jesus didn't come to sit in one synagogue. He came to storm and tackle every stronghold. And so when we come to our modern day, which is similar to this day, where everybody's like, well, I sit under this teacher and this is my synagogue, he came to destroy every synagogue that wasn't centered upon him.

He doesn't care who you sat under. He doesn't care how wise and how awesome you think you are. If you're not yielding yourself to the power of Jesus Christ and his kingdom, then it's a stronghold and he's going to tear it down. Through his words and his deeds, Jesus was restoring, reconciling and redeeming creation to usher in a new creation. Everything in the Bible is about becoming a new creation.

Well, I was born this way, got to be born again. I was born rich, gotta be born again. I was born poor, gotta be born again. Oh, I was taken advantage of while I was a child. I'm sorry that you were born into that.

That's atrocious. But you must be born again. Oh, well, I had the greatest parents ever. Well, that's fantastic. But you must be born again.

Everything is about becoming a new creation in Christ. And so everything that happens, whether you've had roses of a life or your life has been atrocious. And some of you have dealt with horrible abuse in this room. Jesus says that I can be life and new creation for you no matter where you were at and no matter what happened to you. The kingdom of heaven was breaking in.

And Jesus didn't just fulfill the prophecies. He was the prophecy. He embodied every single area and element of that.

When he saw the crowds, verse 36, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus didn't see the crowds as an opportunity for his own gain. He didn't see this as an opportunity for himself to get a new airplane or a new helicopter or a nice house in the Grapevine, Texas area. He saw them as people who were crushed, exhausted and cast down. Sheep without a shepherd.

Sheep without a shepherd aren't free. They're full food for wolves. If you are a sheep without a shepherd, you are wandering, not free. You're going to become wolf chow.

A sheep without A shepherd is in danger. Let's just look at the very practical. You know, I am not a farmer. Shocker. I know.

You look at me and you're like, that guy looks like a farmer. I am not a farmer. I did not grow up in a culture where we farmed. The greatest part of farming was when I got to get organic food from the high end grocery store in Mason, Ohio. I understand.

I am blessed. First world problems. But I did some research this week because I like sheep. Sheep are cute. I love them.

So I looked at sheep this week and was like, sorry, I didn't mean to buy. Sorry. It's okay. You know, I'm still a work in progress too. Jesus, take the wheel.

So I looked at sheep this week and there were some things that I found really ironic in the physical that have such a spiritual connection I never knew before. So some of you in this room, you're going to know this and you're going to like, oh, thank you, that's fine. But this was interesting for me. Their fleece, which we like to make. We're almost in sweater weather.

Yeah, we're almost in sweater weather. And so we like to take the fleece and we like to make it into a sweater for sweater weather. And so their fleece grows heavy and dirty and it ends up actually blinding them when there's not a shepherd there to tend to them. So something that was given to them that also would insulate them, keep them warm, also can go to a point where unkept can actually blind them and cause them what, run off a cliff, Be eaten by a wolf? All kinds of things.

Two, they become easy prey for predators. If there is not a shepherd around and they're by themselves, you might as well just go ahead and fire up the grill because it doesn't matter what time of year it is, that wolf is having some lamb chops. They cannot sustain themselves to find food and water.

I mean, think about this for a second. Like, we can go out this door and we can go right, or we can go left and we can literally get any type of soft drink, any type of drink, any type of food we want. We can have a Sonic Burger, Uber eats to the front door before we even get to the newcomer's lunch today. Like, and so this analogy talks about they couldn't even find food and water on their own. They would struggle in that area.

And if they fall on their backs, they can't get up. They did not have a life alert. They did not have a button that goes, help. I've fallen and I can't get up. If a sheep falls down on its back and it has no shepherd, it is lamb chops, leg of lamb, whatever your preference is.

Lamb in and of itself is hard to cook. If you cook it too much, then it tastes like my belt. And. And so whatever your preference is. But either way, it turns into food.

A predator turns that lamb into a meal. Jesus wasn't describing the Pharisees and the Sadducees or the Essenes. He was describing the ordinary people in all of Israel. They were people who were worn down by their leaders, who should have protected them but instead left them blind, malnourished and vulnerable. This is probably, as of record, the most Torah observant society we have in the Bible.

And yet Jesus likens them to being left blind, malnourished and vulnerable. And the ones that had been entrusted to be called their shepherds had abandoned their posts. If your faith leaves you harassed and helpless, it's not faith, it's a fraud. Let this be a warning to each and every one of us that sheep wandering in their own pastures, they do not thrive. They get killed.

A lot of you in this room have an origin story that's very similar to mine. We grew up loving Jesus, whatever denomination that was. Lots of Baptists, Oklahoma, lots of Baptists. So grew up loving Jesus. And then all of a sudden we caught the rhythms and the cycles of the feasts and the festivals and the weekly Sabbaths and the Jewishness of Jesus and all these Hebraic undertones, Hebraic family fellowship.

We caught all of that. And so what happened? What happened is we kind of swung the pendulum super far. Well, I had Jesus growing up. You know, we were singing in Sunday school, the B, I, B, L E. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, who built the ark?

Noah. Noah. You can't even say Noah anymore. Who built the ark? Noah built the ark.

You didn't know that Noah built it. How many clean animals and unclean. And all of a sudden we in these rabbit trails of things, and we left our first love a little bit, we left that rock, that stability. What was one of the things that happened to us? Oh, the church is evil.

I mean, I was involved in the movement for like 20 years in leadership. And I was like, hey, if you keep telling people that their pastor lied to them, sooner or later they're going to say you lied to them. Because sooner or later they don't trust anybody in authority to teach the Word, no matter how right or how wrong it Is. And guess what happened? We started to what, vacate churches?

Maybe we got into house churches, maybe. But we constantly were like, oh, I don't like the fact that you correct me when I say tzitzi, when I say tzitze, so we can't fellowship anymore. Oh, I don't like that you blow a trumpet rather than a shofar. Oh, I don't like that you say Yeshua versus Jesus. And we literally do it.

It's human, so we do it. We pick whatever it is, and there's a plethora of the things we want. And so what do we do? We end up in a church that loves Jesus, full of people just as broken and screwed up and wrestling as much as they can as you. And then we immediately run over to this place who all of a sudden has everything right.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. And we're on fire for the Lord. And then what happens? We start to fight over the nuances of the scripture. And we divide and we divide and we divide.

We become sheep without shepherds, and we leave the pasture that is protected by shepherds, and we go out into our own so that we can become kibbles and bits for wolves.

Sheeps wandering in their own pastures do not thrive. They get killed. And sometimes it's not even necessarily by a predator. Sometimes it's because they ran over a cliff because the fleece was over their eyes.

How does sheep protect themselves from the predators? They stay connected to the flock. This is one of the most beautiful things. When you look at a sheep, you do not think of, like, these, like, ninja fighting. I think of the pandas, like, you know, Kung Fu Panda, like, aww.

You don't think of sheep that way. So how do sheep fight back? Sheep fight back by staying in a flock, kind of power in numbers, so to speak. And how does the flock overcome the attacks of the wolves? Through a good shepherd.

The shepherds don't have that cane because they were the original, like, godfathers. They have that cane. Why? Because the hook does what? It pulls the sheep back.

Or you can turn it around and you can smack a wolf. Shepherd didn't just get the cane because they're like, congratulations, now you've got, like, the shepherd's hook of power. Like, no, there was a function by which these things existed. Here Jesus is pointing out that the shepherds had become the predators. Think of that for a second.

We see this in modern Christianity now more than ever. You come in these doors knowing that you're broken. People looking for the Experience of a holy God who is the only God who can restore you, only to find out that the shepherds had become the predators.

So you're trying to stay connected to a flock. You're trying to stay healthy, you're trying to stay away from the wolves, only to find out that the wolves are the ones who are guiding you. They're supposed to protect you, and they're not. They're protecting their own interests. And this is what Jesus is talking to.

They had harassed the sheep. They had abandoned their flock. This is not the kingdom of heaven. This is not the kingdom run by Jesus Christ. This is the kingdom of darkness.

And then Jesus says, the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest. Here's another terminology we've had. Son of man, son of God, son of David. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into the harvest field.

How do you harvest crops? Again, I'm kind of somewhat asking the question because it looks like I'm harvesting any crops. I harvest some cilantro the other day for some tacos by going to Walmart. You should be super proud of me. I legit had a green thumb.

How do you harvest? You have to know your crops.

Some crops grow their fruit underground, others grow their fruit above ground. So let's say you need to know the soil. You need to know all these things. So let's say all I've ever done is grown corn. Well, if you don't know your crop, as soon as little green plants come up out of the ground, then you're going, oh, we're harvesting off this corn and you're harvesting us, and all it is is stock.

There's no corn there. What kind of a barbecue is that? When you go to open up the corn on the cob and there ain't no corn on the cob. You have lied to me. You are operating out of the spirit of the adversary.

I was looking for some corn on the cob, and there was no corn on the cob. What if you come through with carrots and you cut the top off and you're like, oh, hey, look, there's no carrot. That's right, because the carrot is underground. If you do not know your crop, then you can't harvest. Or you harvest inappropriately or you don't harvest at all?

And so it says, ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into the field. What's another thing you need to harvest correctly? The right tool. A man I've been fortunate for most of my life, I have surrounded myself with men who are at least 10 years older than me. This has been something I've done for the most part.

I have always surrounded myself with men who were older, sometimes 20 or more years older than I. And that is who I interacted with, that is who I asked counsel with, that is who I did life with. And one of the things they always said, and there's different analogies you can use this is if you see every problem as a nail, you will go with a hammer to every problem. If you are in construction, Anybody in construction here, raise your hand if you're in any form of construction. Okay, all right, we got a couple of people in here.

All right, if you're in forms of construction, if every time you roll up on a project, if all you have is a flathead screwdriver, it's going to make your life a little bit hard, right? Unless you're paid by the hour, then you just. You got to go. You're getting some double time in half. But ultimately, it doesn't help you solve the problem, right?

Because if you come in and you need to hammer two boards together and all you have is a flathead screwdriver, that's going to be a pretty lengthy process. And so in the mentorship realm, they would say, how do you develop a screwdriver, a hammer, a saw, so that when different types of problems in your life come, you can use the right tool to accomplish.

Well, this is what we need to understand about harvesting, too, is some crops need to be cut. So we get a sickle. I give you all a sickle. You know, I'm like Joe Burrow giving swords to his offensive lineman before he gets turf toe. And my whole entire season has been ruined.

So I give you all a sickle, and yet we're harvesting fruit that is underground, and we actually need a shovel to dig up and pull out. What good is the sickle? Might look cool in your man cave or whatever, but it doesn't help you do anything as far as harvesting. You need the right method and the right moment to join together in order to have a good harvest. And Jesus is declaring, the harvest is already plentiful.

The people are ready. But the problem was never the harvest. The problem was the workers. And notice, Jesus did not recognize the Pharisees and the Sadducees, the religious leadership, as the workers of this harvest.

The Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes all thought that they were doing God's work, but they were blind guides, harassing instead of helping. The Pharisees had saw themselves as laborers, but Jesus had called them obstacles. I've heard it said one of the greatest hindrances to modern Jews not accepting Jesus Yeshua as the Messiah is because Christianity has not taught him as the Jewish Messiah.

The Gospel of Matthew seems to take issue with that concept. The reason why is because Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew alone, we're not even through it. We're not even close to being through it. Jesus is consistently being recorded fulfilling the Torah and the prophets. Almost everything he does, almost everything he says is intentional.

He didn't come in and he wasn't like speaking, okay, so this happened to me too. So just to give you an idea, so I'm older, shock. My kids will come in and they'll be like, skippity Ohio Riz. And I'm like, watch your mouth.

That is a disconnect in language. I know I'm not a boomer, but I act like it, I get it. But that is a disconnect in language that we have. Jesus did not use a disconnect in language. He was intentional about terminology.

He was intentional about the parables. He was intentional about what he did to reveal to them that the Jewish Messiah, that everything in the Torah and the prophet spoke about was here.

And they missed it. A good majority of them missed it, especially the religious leadership. They missed it whether it was intentional or not. And again, I can't speak to the matters of all of their hearts, but there's a lot of times in the Gospel of Matthew where Jesus calls them brawl of vipers. He calls them, you know, not nice things that would be equivalent to bad words in our society.

And so from that standpoint, it's not that Christianity has misrepresented who Jesus, the Jewish Messiah was. Jesus himself was twisted through the misrepresentation of the Pharisees and some of the Sadducees. Obviously in Luke's writings, in the Acts of the Epistles, we see that some of the Sadducees in the time of Pentecost, around Acts chapter two through chapter six, they come to the belief in Jesus as the Jewish Messiah and they leave their synagogues and they start to partake in this first century Jewish church.

And I don't want to rag on Judaism here, but, you know, this is no different than modern Christianity where we profess Jesus as Lord and then we live a life that basically testifies that Satan is.

It's the same thing. And the Bible is clear that we have to have equal weights and measures by which we do things. It's the same thing. If you refuse to reap in the kingdom of Jesus, you will rotate.

Here's a sobering truth. When you stop following Jesus and you start following your own agendas, we're no longer laborers in God's harvest. We're obstacles in his field.

And the kingdom of God doesn't hand you a list of acceptable excuses. It hands you a sickle and. And tells you to get to it. The kingdom of heaven doesn't harass worship team. You can come back.

It doesn't leave you helpless. This is the juxtaposition of what we see between Jesus testifying about the harvest and the Pharisees harvesting and the Sadducees harvesting. The Essenes didn't do a lot of harvesting unless those people moved into their community, but they were still discipling in their community. And so there is a juxtaposition. There is a very big contrast between Jesus harvest and their harvest.

Jesus kingdom and his harvest transforms sheep into shepherds, those who guard, tend, and prosper the field that's been entrusted to them. You know, I think it was December 3rd or 4th of 2022. I came back from my first sabbatical with my family, and I stood on the stage of HFF at our facility down off of Indian Hills, which is now a parking lot, about to become a part of the ota. Whatever side you're on, that argument, whew, that's a Pharisees and Sadducees argument. But stood on that stage.

And I repented for the seven years of leading this fellowship, of knowing that God had asked me to do things and. And had told me to do things that were, I believe, for the benefit of the people in the church, but because I was trying to be balanced with different ministries we worked with, that I had taken my decision of what that balance looked like, and I had executed that versus doing what the Lord told me. And I repented from the very stage for not being a shepherd who put Jesus first, who put my own agendas in those moments first.

In the last three years, I can promise you there is one major goal that our leadership team has for each and every person in this church. Whether you come from the origin story that we came from, or you have a completely different origin story, you don't need me.

You don't. I am a shepherd of a flock. We pray Jesus brings whatever sheep into the flock Jesus wants. That's it. It's in his hands.

But every sheep that comes through the door, whether they're here for one service, or they're here for many, many services. We want them to be empowered more than ever before in their life. The goal is not for you to sit here for 20 years in the pews of this church and to act like you need to hear me preach every week. The goal is for you to be equipped for the goal and the gift of Jesus's kingdom. A gift that was put inside each and every one of you before you were born.

And so this is not a gift that I get to give you. It is a gift that Jesus has already given you. My job is to shepherd you, to become shepherds yourself. Because the most important currency of the Kingdom of God is not money. It is not barley.

It is not wheat. It is not all these other things. It's you.

It's the laborers to further multiply the kingdom of God. And if I want to look at the Lord face to face and for him to say, well done, my good and faithful servant, it is not because I put 300 people in a sanctuary for Feast of Trumpets. It is not because 20,000 people watch our YouTube channel. It is not because you like my hair or you hate my hair. I don't care what your opinion is on my hair.

It is that you would be the best version of who Christ created you to be.

Shepherds were to guard, tend, and prosper the fields entrusted to them, not to plow it and to use it for their personal gain. Stop living as harassed sheep and start laboring as apprenticed harvesters. The harvest was so abundant in this time. Can you imagine what it is now?

All of the things going around social media, talking about, about the revivals that happened at the Charlie Kirk funeral and stuff like that. It's happening before your eyes. And it's awesome that people want to talk about God being testified here or God being testified there, but what good is it? You just talk about God being testified here or there if you're not doing anything to harvest the field?

Let's all get together, because we all love Jesus, and let's all just talk about how much we love Jesus. Guess what? There was a group of people in the Bible who did that. A couple of them turned into Pharisees, turned into Sadducees. They turned into Essenes.

The Kingdom of God requires you to become laborers. It is not a stagnant and idle kingdom. The harvest is so abundant that you don't need to steal from somebody else's field. There are more opportunities in the kingdom to work for God than there are laborers to reap so why are we worried about taking people from other churches or things from other people's houses? The harvest is plentiful.

The laborers are few. What fields has God placed in your life to harvest?

That's right. The fruit that's being produced in your heart and your walk is not for you. It's not so that you could store it up with your go bag so that when the abomination of desolation happens, we can all deer cart it through the woods to get shot. It's so that you could multiply the kingdom of God and the power of God at hand. How are you tending your family, your marriages, your friendships, your workplace?

You can't feed somebody with the fruit of your life, and you can't harvest something that you're not sewing into. Oh, I want a great marriage. Then stop watching TV till 11 o' clock in the evening while your spouse is in the other room. Oh, I want to be a great father. I want to harvest the field of the fruit of being a great father.

Maybe you should say hi to your son and daughter.

Oh, but there was football on. Yeah, put them to bed. I can promise you Baker Mayfield's gonna beat them anyways.

What you tend and what you plant in your home and in your life and in your marriage and in your friendship and in your workplace and in your church, it matters.

The kingdom doesn't leave you in therapy forever. I know people. Chris, you're so hard. You're so harsh. I'm not hard and I'm not harsh.

There's nothing in the gospel where Jesus says, thank God you found a therapist. And thank God you could admit what happened to you. Now, let's just keep sitting on a couch for the next hour every week talking about the same thing. The kingdom of God doesn't leave you in therapy. It delivers and deploys you as a weapon of warfare.

Everybody in this room has a trauma. Everybody in this room has something that horrible that's happened to you in your life. You're not the only one. The difference is, is. Is your testimony that you allow Jesus to come in and work the fields of your heart so that you could harvest the healing and the deliverance.

Abstinence is. Is in deliverance, guys. You can shut your computer off and not look at it. Great. Awesome.

You're abstinent. But it's only God who can deliver you. You can. You could say, okay, I'm going to speak kinder to my wife. For now that I'm making more money, I can bring flowers home.

Great. You're abstinent from being a really crappy husband, but it doesn't mean you're thriving. The harvest is ready.

The harvest delivers and deploys out.

And each one of us was given a gift. And we know people right in this room, whether they're in our own family, whether in our own city, wherever they might be who they don't understand, and they're not experiencing the power of the true freedom of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Jewish Messiah. They're still arguing whether or not he was doing it the right way.

Can I let you in on a secret? It's kind of. It might be cheating.

There's only one person in the entire Bible. It's a lot of people. All the people who left Egypt across the Red Sea, all the people at Sinai, all the people who walked in the wilderness died in the wilderness. Their children and their grandchildren raised up in the wilderness, went into the land. All the exiles, all the prophets and the exiles, the billions of people that came and went.

In the time frame of the Bible, there is only one who lives a spotless life, who didn't make a mistake.

Guess what that means. Everybody in this room is not him.

So we have to come to a place where we can be honest about the fact that at some point in time in our life, we were harassed and we were helpless.

At some point in time in our life, we might have been the one who was doing the harassing and the empowering for people to be helpless. But your invitation and my invitation are exactly the same. Ask the Lord of the harvest to prepare the laborers for the harvest.

Because in the end, everybody in this room is going to die and be forgotten. This week we lost a champion of the faith. Lost a lot of champions of the faith recently.

Bodie was a good one, too.

At some point in time, his name will kind of fade away.

But thousands and thousands of years ago, a name has never faded away, and that's Jesus Christ.

The harvest is ready. We have to go.

I won't stop until the whole world.

The power of Jesus to save every soul. I am not ashamed of the gospel.

I will preach the gospel. I will die and be forgotten. Maybe my kids will come to my tombstone once a year. I don't know. Maybe I get cremated and they.

I don't know. Who knows? But I'll die and I'll be forgotten.

And it will be worth everything as long as Jesus gets the glory.

Today we're going to respond, and I want to ask you, what part of your life is sending out to harvest people to be set free by the power of Jesus Christ, because there are people that you pass every single day who are enslaved.

The harvest is ready. We are to ask the Lord of the harvest to send us out as laborers. So as we look this week for the Day of Atonement service on Thursday night, as we look towards tabernacles and we're all looking forward to smoking a cigar and drinking a beer and, you know, doing all that stuff we do in tabernacles, there's nothing wrong with a brisket. I believe it was the manna from heaven. It's not contextually true, but that's how I like to think.

But it is nothing in comparison to preaching the gospel to a soul that is lost. It is nothing in comparison to reaching somebody who is enslaved and bound up by their sin and allowing them to experience the power and the presence of the ruach Hakodesh to be set free. The harvest is ready.

I'm not ashamed of the gospel. If you will stand with me and let's respond.