“After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before His face into every city and place, where He Himself would come. Therefore said He unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest” (Lk. 10:1-2).
These words are arresting for a number of reasons. The phrase “after these things” pushes our thinking back to the previous events found in chapter 9. The Lord Jesus, using a divine “time machine,” had hurled Peter, James and John thousands of years into the future. They had seen the Master in His kingdom glory as He had prophesied in verse 27: “But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God.”
How crucial to daily pray, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” While we understand the biblical distinctions between the Church and the kingdom, we must not forget we have a role in the kingdom. We have been “delivered…from the power of darkness, and…translated into the kingdom of His dear Son” (Col. 1:13). Yet at present the kingdom on earth is in mystery form. We await with joy the Saviour’s taking of His kingly rights on earth.
However Peter exhorts us to give “all diligence” to use the Christian’s calculator. We must add to our faith: virtue + knowledge + self-control + perseverance + godliness + brotherly kindness + love” (2 Pet. 1:5-7). In this way “an entrance shall be ministered to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” (v. 11).
Notice as well in Luke 10 that the Lord had increased the number of His front-line troops seven-fold (many manuscripts read “seventy and two others”). So to the twelve commissioned in 9:1, He now sends out 70 or 72 more. This is good strategic thinking. They were to be advanced teams going “before His face into every city and place, where He Himself would come.” In this way, He could reap where they had sown. He said as much to the twelve at Samaria:
Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal: that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true, One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labor: other men labored, and ye are entered into their labors (Jn. 4:35-38).
So Jesus thought not only that working individually was not the best; He also thought that teams of reapers should follow hard on the path of teams of sowers. Can we learn something here? This is, after all, the Master plan.
But even multiplying His ministry through the ministry of the twelve, and then multiplying the twelve— until there were seven times that many—was not enough. We have been called on to ask for even more help from the Lord of the harvest.
How much help should we be asking for? The Lord Jesus didn’t say exactly, but He gave two clues. The number of workers would be affected by the number of laborers already working, which He said were “few,” and by the size of the project, which He said was “great.” Notice it is laborers He needs, taken from a word that simply means “someone who gets things done.” Talkers we have aplenty, conference preachers, etc. We need some workers out there.
Finally notice the graphic word the Lord uses for the process of getting people out into the field. It is the word ekballo, to hurl or thrust out. It is also translated “expel,” “drive,” and “pluck.” One dictionary gives its meaning as “to lead one forth or away somewhere with a force which he cannot resist.” Hmmm! Are those of us whom the Lord wants to use as laborers so attached to family, career, personal agendas, or whatever that He will have to expel us from our family circles, pluck us out of our jobs, drive us from our own plans, and thus hurl us into His work?