Matthew 9:35-38
35 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. 36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 “Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
The kind of transformation that the Gospel of Christ creates within us is this very compassion we read about in Jesus. Once we receive God’s eternal hope in Him when we are reconciled through Christ, we can’t help but to share it with others! It’s an eternal joy that is uncontainable. Look at what Jesus was doing; He was healing every kind of disease and sickness because of His compassion for the people. He hated to see them suffering and by the power of the Holy Spirit inside of Him He was able to love them in a tangible way. As Christians, we want to do the same thing, but we always stop short of the full glory of God. We limit our beliefs as to what is possible through God’s love. We saw before that these things didn’t come from Jesus the man walking the earth, but through the Man from the Father by the Spirit. Additionally, He saw their spiritual and emotional depravity and began to guide them through life. But He recognized the great need and encourages us to ask God to send more workers to do the very same thing He was doing. That’s you and me!
So what are we missing? Poverty affects 3 areas of life: physical, emotional, and spiritual. Ministry to others involves all three. Maybe the initial indicator of poverty is seen as just one of these three, but just as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three and one in the same, these three aspects of our lives are fully separate yet fully one in our own self. They are all integrated and when one is affected, the other two take the hit as well. So maybe someone is undernourished. Maybe someone has been emotionally abused. Maybe they have been in a spiritual drought. Whatever the affliction is, it infects the whole self and therefore the whole self must be treated. If we treat someone for malnourishment, we also have to tend to the emotional pain that came with it: “Why do others get food and I don’t? Why did my parents abandon me?” The spiritual questions must also be answered: “Why did God let me starve? Why are others blessed and I’m not?”
Jesus was caring for these people, but He also called for others to be what we now call the “hands and feet of Jesus.” We need to recognize that healing every kind of disease and sickness is a part of the gospel of the kingdom of God. It isn’t just something Jesus did to show off, it is something that He has taught us to do. So why aren’t we doing it? Preaching the Gospel isn’t just reading the bible out loud, having discipleship classes, or being a social media preacher. It is healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Are you really proclaiming the whole gospel? Jesus encourages us to beseech the Lord of the harvest to send more workers. We need more workers that emulate Christ, not the ones who are proclaiming only parts of the gospel.
