PB Devotional

Jesus’ compassion is aroused by people’s spiritual needs. To him, the crowds looked like sheep without a shepherd. In a famous Old Testament passage the prophet Ezekiel compared Israel’s corrupt religious leaders to shepherds who get fat off their sheep while neglecting to care for their most basic needs (Ezekiel 34). The people in Jesus’ day were also suffering because of a lack of good leadership. They were “harassed and helpless,” in Jesus’ words; beaten up and beaten down, we might say.

And in our own time it’s not hard either to think of examples of religious teachers or ideological leaders who take advantage of and prey upon the people they are supposed to be helping. Ours is a world of misled masses and confused crowds. There are the victims of false religions: people whose religion teaches them to hate and kill, for example; or people who’ve been told that faith is a guaranteed path to health and wealth, or people who think they can earn their way to God by being good.

And then there are all those who are deceived by the world view of secularism: those who believe that money and luxury equal happiness, those who think that sex is god, or that science is god, or that they are god.

Jesus sees them all as lost sheep.  He sees all who do not know him and are not following him not just as objects of pity and compassion but as prospects for conversion. “The harvest,” he says, looking out at the crowds, “the harvest is plentiful.” The world’s great spiritual need is the church’s great missionary opportunity.

Celebrate the Lord of the Harvest!!