Part 4: Seeing As Jesus Sees
Victory Life Church — Sunday, May 3, 2026
Link to a downloadable PDF:
2026-04-26 – Follow Me, Part 4
Scripture Reading
Matthew 9:35–38 (ESV)35 And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. 37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Introduction
Think of someone whom you think has “the good life.” What kind of life does that person have? What did it take for that person to reach that point? Who are some of your heroes, people whom you aspire to be?
Our culture’s image of the good life is generally in the category of “celebrities.” No era of history has been without its celebrities. Success plus wealth plus stunning good looks is a winning formula, no matter where or when you live. Thanks to the exposure we get from the internet and social media, study after study reports that the number one goal of most people under the age of 30 is “not to cure cancer, or revitalize their hometown, or marry their high school sweetheart, but rather to be famous — to be a celebrity, to be recognized and praised for doing something rather than simply to do the thing.”
Think about what that is doing to our souls. Now, so many people are navigating their day through the lens of seeking the attention and admiration of the people around them (in person or online), and then get stressed out when “outperformed” by droves of other people they’ve never met. Is this really the good life?
We need heroes, yes. We need people to show the way of what it means to live a good and meaningful life. Christianity is no exception. Yet, sadly, we have gone the way of the culture and have crafted our own celebrity culture, and it is to our detriment. Historically,
Christianity’s vision of the good life was not shaped by celebrities but by saints.
The saints of old, those who lived a sacrificial life in order to glorify the name of Jesus, are the ones who embody the good life. The most inspiring lives are ones that are lived in service of a higher ideal, a calling, rather than ones that are built on attention and consumption.
We are in a series entitled “Follow Me,” looking at the words of Jesus, inviting us to follow Him as His disciple, and learning what that means. We’re learning what He envisions the good life to be, counter to our culture’s vision of the good life.
The Cultural Problem
We are being conditioned to see the goal of life as performing for the approval of others, while also insulating ourselves from the dangers and pains we see in others. Combined with the constant force toward consuming whatever we want, the good life is upheld as one of living to ensure our own comfort. This has its roots in the original human problem: seeing something good, desiring it with a deep craving, then taking it for ourselves.
Genesis 3:6 formula for sin: See — Desire — Take
The Default Mode of Consumer Culture
Consumer culture forms us as takers: we evaluate experiences, relationships, and even communities in terms of what they give us. Social media: designed to maximize engagement by triggering desire, comparison, and craving. Consumer advertising: premised on the idea that we lack something and that purchasing it will fill the lack. Even our approach to church and spiritual experience can become self-consuming — ‘what am I getting out of this?’ We are deeply formed by consumerism.
“The consumer Christian is one who utilizes the grace of God for forgiveness and the services of the church for special occasions, but does not give his or her life and innermost thoughts, feelings, and intentions over to the kingdom of the heavens. Such Christians are not inwardly transformed and not committed to it. Because this is so, they remain not just “imperfect,” for all of us remain imperfect, but routinely and seriously unable and unwilling to do the good they know to do.” ~ Dallas Willard
[Transition]
Jesus’ invitation to follow Him in Matthew 16:24, which we looked at in the first week, is one of self-denial, not one of self-fulfillment.
Matthew 16:24 (NIV)24 “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
“Jesus’s command to follow him is a command to align our loves and longings with his — to want what God wants, to desire what God desires, to hunger and thirst after God and crave a world where he is all in all.”
Last week, we looked at Jesus’ summary of the whole of Scripture: the greatest command is one that ensures the good life as one of loving God and loving neighbor. The greatest commandment is simultaneously the greatest invitation to transformation. If we love God with our whole person, we will gradually become people who love the way God loves.
Matthew 22:37-40 — Jesus’ transformation: see what he sees, wants what he wants, loves as he loves.
Jesus says to love ‘your neighbor,’ which is singular. This protects the command from two distortions: sentimental humanitarianism (‘love the whole wide world as yourself’) and enthusiastic romanticism (‘love your neighbor even more than yourself’). The normal way disciples love the world is by giving each member of that world their loving attention as they pass by on a typical day.
Jesus’ Solution
This week, let’s look at how this transformation looks in everyday life, one specific way we are to be transformed by Jesus and love our neighbor as He does.
Matthew 9:35 (ESV)35 And Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction.
Here, we have Matthew’s way of summing up Jesus’ mission: to announce and enact the kingdom of God. This verse is nearly identical to an earlier verse summarizing Jesus’s mission, Matthew 4:23. Matthew intends for us to read these statements as they are connected to his larger story of Jesus.
Jesus’ mission was to announce and enact the kingdom of God.
Matthew 4:23 — Summary of Jesus’ Mission
Matthew 5-7 — Announcing the Kingdom
Matthew 8-9 — Enacting the Kingdom
Matthew 9:35 — Summary of Jesus’ Mission
We are to see this block of stories about Jesus together as one. His mission, summarized in 4:23, is to announce and enact the Kingdom of God. Matthew 5-7, commonly referred to as the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus announcing the Kingdom of God, teaching His disciples how to live within and under God’s kingdom reign. Matthew 8-9 is a block of stories in which Jesus enacts the Kingdom of God, living out what His teachings mean: healing the sick, setting people free, forgiving sinners, and so much more. Matthew 9:35 is a near-identical summary of His mission, making the next few verses a conclusion to this section of Matthew’s gospel.
“The opening verse — ‘And Jesus was walking around . . . teaching . . . heralding . . . and healing’ — is almost a word-for-word replication of the sentence that prefaced the Sermon on the Mount (4:23). This striking duplication means that these sentences (4:23 and 9:35) are parentheses embracing all the material between chaps. 5 and 9 (called inclusio in rhetoric, an author’s way of marking off sections).”
Matthew 9:36 — What Jesus Saw and Felt
Matthew 9:36 (ESV)36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Genesis 3:6: See — Desire — Take; Jesus’ transformation: See — Compassion
The phrase Matthew uses to describe what Jesus sees in the crowds of people who had come to be transformed by him is, “They were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” It’s a way of describing the failure of leadership and the overwhelming condition of their plight. ”’Barely making it’ would make a fair modern paraphrase.”
Jesus could see that their souls were overwhelmed by the circumstances and challenges of their lives. What is His response? Compassion. The Greek verb splanchnizō means, literally, ‘to feel in the viscera’. Jesus has a visceral response in His body, one of compassion.
“Jesus hurts when he sees people, he ‘feels for’ them, they ‘grab’ him down deeply, they ‘reach’ him.”
When Jesus saw the plight of the crowds, their pain and brokenness, their misery and helplessness, He wasn’t put out by their suffering, seeing them as an inconvenience to His busy life. He didn’t see their pain and become afraid of them asking too much of Him. He didn’t see in them a problem to avoid and insulate Himself safely from. Jesus didn’t see in them an audience to perform for and win their approval. He felt their overwhelming pain in compassion.
“I often wonder whether this is why the church lacks credibility in our world. Maybe it’s not just our big scandals and cultural failures; maybe it’s something much smaller, more common, more deadly. Maybe it’s our exhaustion. Maybe we are just too tired to model agape love, too scheduled to show compassion, too distracted to pray, too much like the exhausted culture around us.” ~ Jon Tyson
“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” ~ Henri Nouwen
This is what it means to love our “singular” neighbor, to be present to the one in pain right in front of us. When our love of God is real, it transforms us. Our love of God should overflow into the capacity to love others as God loves them. Self-giving love of neighbor is the fruit of abiding in God’s love.
Matthew 9:37-38
Matthew 9:37-38 (ESV)37 Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; 38 therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.”
Jesus’ transformation: See — Compassion — Pray
In prayer, we are drawn into the heart of God to see what he sees, desire what he desires, and love as he loves.
Prayer is the key. Jesus does not first send, He first calls to prayer. This is the sequence: see the harvest → feel compassion → pray for workers → then (10:1, 5) He sends.
Prayer is not an optional spiritual discipline for the especially devout; it is the birthplace of mission.
Jesus sees in this harassed and helpless crowd a “harvest.” There’s a problem: laborers. The Greek word ergatas (“workers”) is significant: it is the plain, unpretentious word for laborers, not spiritual heroes or professional clergy.
The harvest does not need highly skilled spiritual entrepreneurs — it needs simple, obedient workers.
Jesus never once instructs us to pray that God would pursue people. That part is just guaranteed. He’s the one who came to seek and to save the lost. He’s the good shepherd who leaves the 99 in pursuit of the wandering one. He’s the doctor out looking for the sick. God’s pursuit is never in question. He does instruct us to pray for laborers.
Matthew 10:1, 5a — Jesus’ Mission Becomes His Disciples’ Mission
Matthew 10:1, 5a (ESV)1 And he called to him his twelve disciples and gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal every disease and every affliction… 5 These twelve Jesus sent out…
Prayer is the key, but you are also being sent as laborers. “Until now it has been Jesus who has taught and healed, but in the providence of God the followers of Jesus are to be given an important place in the work of the kingdom.” Jesus’ vision of the good life — one in which we love God and love our neighbor and are being transformed into his image — is one of compassion that moves toward people, prayer that connects us to God’s mission, and living a life that is sent.
Jesus’ vision of the good life is one of compassion that moves toward people, prayer that connects us to God’s mission, and living a life that is sent.
Being sent is not primarily about what disciples do but about who they are in relation to Jesus. The commission is identity-forming. You are a sent people.
Challenges to Evangelism:
This introduces the idea of evangelism. When this word gets mentioned, most Christians shudder or roll their eyes. For many, the idea of evangelizing brings feelings of fear, insecurity, rejection, or worse yet, awkwardness. Though there are people who are specifically gifted as evangelists, that does not excuse us from our identity as a “sent” people, given directly by Jesus. We may need to rethink the images we have in our minds of what evangelism is.
Evangelism is not for the few; it is an essential part of our own discipleship to Jesus.
So how do we make sense of evangelism in a way that is simple enough for each of us to live out? Research has shown that a significant number of people who do not go to church or do not practice any faith are actually open to it (upwards of 80% or more). One researcher commented, “The fear is often greater in the Christian than in the person they’d be talking to.” There are more people who would say yes to Jesus, not just the church, if we’d only ask.
The Barna Research Group did a survey titled “Is Evangelism Going Out of Style?” where they polled over 2,000 adults and discovered this: 100% of Christians agree with the statement, “I personally have a responsibility to tell other people about my religious beliefs.” But only 69% of Christians agreed that, during the past 12 months, they had actually explained their religious beliefs to someone with different beliefs in hopes they might accept Christ as their savior. That’s a 31% gap between what we believe and how we actually live — or what we really believe, if we’re being completely honest.
In another study by the Barna Group, it found that because younger Christians (mainly Millennials) tend to have more non-Christian friends, almost half (47%) felt that it was wrong to share their faith with someone of a different faith. Evangelism, in some ways, has become taboo in our culture.
David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group, concludes from this research, “Cultivating deep, steady, resilient Christian conviction is difficult in a world of ‘you do you’ and ‘don’t criticize anyone’s life choices’ and emotivism, the feelings-first priority that our culture makes a way of life. As much as ever, evangelism isn’t just about saving the unsaved, but reminding ourselves that this stuff matters, that the Bible is trustworthy and that Jesus changes everything.”
How do we keep this simple and uncomplicated? Remember, Jesus’ word for “laborers” to be sent into the harvest is a common, normal word, in no way denoting expertise. “Jesus does not tell us that the need is for leadership or for experts, or even for particularly fiery types; the need is quite prosaically for ‘workers.’ And their work is not even described as sowing seed…but as working on an already present harvest.”
Evangelism is simply joining the work the Holy Spirit has already begun.
The harvest belongs to God. Our role is to pray, to go when sent, and to trust the Lord of the harvest. This does not produce passivity — it produces a different quality of action: rooted in dependence rather than anxiety. Mission flows from Jesus’ compassion, not from human guilt, obligation, or moral superiority. The denying of self makes room for Jesus’ compassion to work through us.
A self-focused disciple cannot be genuinely compassionate, because compassion requires turning toward others in their need.
The theologian and historian Michael Green, in his book Thirty Years that Changed the World, says: “[The] passion to spread the gospel…was a major characteristic of the early church. They challenge us to put evangelism at the head of our list of priorities, and give ourselves to it wholeheartedly. For the church in the West has grown complacent, obese, inactive and far too respectable to do that sort of thing.”
“The idea is this: there are Christian workers already there in every Christian church. All they need is to have a fire lit under them, to have the living God ‘cast out’ of their creature comforts and into the world of adventure and need, into the breathtaking work of harvesting the field of God!”
The Story of Agnes
Tony Campolo opens his book The Kingdom of God is Party with the true story of a speaking engagement he once had in Honolulu. Terribly jet-lagged, he wakes up at 2:30 a.m. the first morning, super hungry. Living in a world before Google Maps, he starts wandering around the city looking for anywhere that’s open. An hour later, he happens upon a 24-hour diner. He walks in — the only person there. He sits at the counter, orders, and as he’s waiting, he hears a group of eight or nine female prostitutes walk in and sit down behind him.
He hears every word of their conversation. Eventually, one of them says, “I’m going to be 39 tomorrow.” Someone says, “Oh, what do you want us to do, throw you a birthday party?” And she says, “I’ve never had a birthday party in my life. Why start now?” And everyone laughs.
When they slip out a bit later, Campolo turns to the cook: “Hey, do they come in here every night?” “Yep, every night, right on the dot.” “And that one who said it’s her birthday — do you know her?” “Oh yeah, that’s Agnes.” “I’ve got an idea. What if you and I throw Agnes a birthday party?”
So Campolo shows up at 2:30 a.m. the next night, but when he gets there, the place is already packed with about 25 prostitutes from the area, because the cook has put the word out. They hang birthday decorations and balloons all over the diner.
An hour later, when that group of nine walks in again, they all shout, “Happy Birthday!” Agnes is so taken aback, her legs just start trembling, and two people have to lead her to a barstool. The cook comes out with a cake with 39 candles burning in it and sets it right before her. As they finish the song, she says, “I know that I’m supposed to blow out the candles, and everyone gets a piece. But I’ve never had a birthday cake before, and I’d really like to just take this home and put it in my freezer so I can look at it from time to time. Would that be alright?” And when she asked that — with tears streaming down her face — the mood in the room swung from celebratory to quite somber. Campolo just breaks the silence with a prayer over Agnes, because that’s what pastors do when no one knows what to say next.
He says, “Amen,” and then the cook says, “Hey, you didn’t tell me you were a preacher.” “Well, you can pray if you’re not a preacher, but I kind of am.” “What kind of church do you belong to?” And he says:
“I belong to the church that throws birthday parties for strangers at 3:30 in the morning. And that’s the church of Jesus Christ.”
And that’s what she was at her very best and what she still is at her very best. So whatever has gotten stuck to Jesus as a result of people who have used his name for something less than that, you have to know today that that is who he is. He’s the one who throws birthday parties for prostitutes in the middle of the night and parties for tax collectors in the light of day.
Response Time
Holy Spirit, convict us in the ways we have seen people through the eyes of culture rather than the eyes of Jesus. Show us where we have hardened our hearts toward other people’s pain and suffering. We pray that the Lord of the harvest would send laborers, and we submit ourselves as laborers to be sent into the world. Holy Spirit, enable us to join the work you are already doing in someone’s life.