3. The Key to the Master’s Option
The Key to the Missionary Problem
Matthew 9:38
1. The Key to the Master’s Orders
Pray ye therefore . . .
The key to the missionary problem is in the hand of God, not of man, and according to Our Lord, the key is prayer, not work, as that word is popularly understood, because work may mean evading spiritual concentration. Our Lord says—“Pray ye therefore. . . .”
We are not speaking of the lock which the key has to open, viz., the problems of missionary enterprise, but of the key to those problems. That key is put into our hands by Jesus Christ, and it is not a common-sense key. It is not a medical key, nor a civilising key, nor an educational key, not even an evangelical key; the key is prayer. We are challenged straight away by the difference between our view of prayer and Our Lord’s view. Prayer to us is not practical, it is stupid, and until we do see that prayer is stupid, that is, stupid from the ordinary natural common-sense point of view, we will never pray. “It is absurd to think that God is going to alter things in answer to prayer!” But that is what Jesus says He will do. It sounds stupid, but it is a stupidity based on His Redemption. The reason that our prayers are not answered is that we are not stupid enough to believe what Jesus says. It is a child, and only a child who has prayer answered; a wise and prudent man does not (cf. Matthew 11:25). We have to be as natural as children in our relationship to Jesus Christ, and He does His work all the time. Jesus Christ is our Master, and He lays down His orders very distinctly—“Pray ye therefore. . . .”
(a) Prayer the Work (John 14:12-14)
We are apt to think of prayer as a common-sense exercise of our higher powers in order to prepare us for work; whereas in the teaching of Jesus, prayer is not to fit us for the “greater works,” prayer is the work. Prayer is the outcome of our apprehension of the nature of God, the means whereby we assimilate more and more of His mind, and the means whereby He unveils His purposes to us.
(b) Prayer the Fruit (John 15:16)
The way fruit remains is by prayer. Our Lord puts prayer as the means to fruit-producing and fruit-abiding work; but, remember, it is prayer based on His agony, not on our agony. God is not impressed by our earnestness, He nowhere promises to answer prayer because of our agony in intercession, but only on the ground of Redemption. We have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,” and in no other way. We take the crown off Redemption as the ground on which God answers prayer and put it on our own earnestness. Prayer is the miracle of Redemption at work in us, which will produce the miracle of Redemption in the lives of others.
(c) Prayer the Battle (Ephesians 6:11-20)
The armour is for the battle of prayer. “Take up the whole armour of God. . . . Stand therefore, . . .” and then pray. The armour is not to fight in, but to shield us while we pray. Prayer is the battle. The reason we do not pray is that we do not own Jesus Christ as Master, we do not take our orders from Him. The key to the Master’s orders is prayer, and where we are when we pray is a matter of absolute indifference. In whatever way God is engineering our circumstances, that is the duty—pray.
2. The Key to the Master’s Ownership
the Lord of the harvest . . .
According to Our Lord, He owns the harvest, and the harvest is the crisis in innumerable lives all over the world. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest”—not pray because we are wrought up over the needs of the heathen, nor pray to procure funds for a society, but pray to the Lord of the harvest. It is appalling how little attention we pay to what Our Lord says. “As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you” (rv)—to put in a sickle, to reap. All over the world, there are crises in lives, they are all around us, heathen and Christian, we meet them by the score every day we live; but unless we are set on obeying our Master’s orders, we shall never see them. Supposing the crisis comes in my father’s life, my brother’s life, am I there as a labourer that the harvest may be reaped for Jesus? Jesus said, “Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations”; and we cannot disciple others unless we ourselves are disciples. The evangelical emphasis has too often been: “So many souls saved, thank God, now they are all right.” the idea being that we have done this thing for God. It is God who saves men; we have to do the discipling after they are saved.
(a) His Position in His Own World (Colossians 1:16-18)
Our Lord’s position in His own world is that of Creator. From the remotest star to the last grain of sand, all things were created by Him. His own creatures always recognised Him—“He came unto His own things” (John 1:11 rv mg). They do not recognise our lordship because we have too much of the brute about us; the whole creation is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God (rv).
(b) His Position among His Own People (John 1:11)
“And they that were His own received Him not” (rv). Jesus is never recognised by any man until the personal crisis of conviction of sin is reached. He is the owner of the harvest, not of everyone; they will not have Him until this point of crisis is reached. Jesus Christ owns the harvest which is produced in men by the distress of conviction of sin; and it is this harvest we have to pray that labourers may be thrust out to reap. We may be taken up with the activities of a denomination, or be giving ourselves up to this committee and that, whilst all about us people are ripe unto harvest and we do not reap one of them, but waste our Lord’s time in over-energised activities for furthering some cause or denomination.
Jesus Christ is the Lord of the harvest. There are no nations whatever in His outlook, no respect of persons with Him††††; His outlook is the world. How many of us pray without respect of persons, and with respect to one Person only, Jesus Christ?
(c) His Position over His Own Disciples (John 17:6)
“Thine they were, and Thou gavest them Me.” The disciple is Christ’s own, and the disciple is not above his Master.† He tells us to pray, His Spirit is abroad, and the fields are white already to harvest, but the eyes of all saving His disciples are holden. If for one whole day, quietly and determinedly, we were to give ourselves up to the ownership of Jesus and to obeying His orders, we should be amazed at its close to realise all He had packed into that one day. We say—“Oh, but I have a special work to do.” No Christian has a special work to do. A Christian is called to be Jesus Christ’s own, one chosen by Him; one who is not above his Master, and who does not dictate to Jesus as to what he intends to do. Our Lord calls to no special work; He calls to Himself. Pray to the Lord of the harvest, and He will engineer your circumstances and thrust you out.
3. The Key to the Master’s Option
. . . that He send forth labourers into His harvest. (rv)
The form the prayer is to take is also dictated by the Master—“that He send forth labourers into His harvest.” This leaves no room for the “amateur providence” notion which arises out of our neglect to take our orders from Jesus Christ. We must pray to the Lord of the harvest, and take our orders from Him, and from no one else. The desire to be an amateur providence always arises when Jesus Christ is not recognised as the universal Sovereign.
(a) The Direction of the Work (John 4:35-38)
The “others” who laboured are the prophets and apostles, “and ye are entered into their labours.” The great Sower of the seed of the Redemption is the Holy Ghost. The direction of the work is at the option of the Master, not at the choice of the disciple. Mark the significance of the term “labour.” We refuse to pray unless we get thrills. May God save us from that counterfeit of true prayer, it is the intensest form of spiritual selfishness. We have to labour, and to labour along the line of His direction. Jesus Christ says—Pray. It looks stupid; but when we labour at prayer results happen all the time from His standpoint, because God creates something in answer to, and by means of prayer, that was not in existence before. “Labour.” It is the one thing we will not do. We will take open-air meetings, we will preach—but labour at prayer! There is nothing thrilling about a labouring man’s work, but it is the labouring man who makes the conceptions of the genius possible; and it is the labouring saint who makes the conceptions of his Master possible.
(b) The Disposition of the Worker (Matthew 10:24)
Wherever the providence of God may dump us down, in a slum, in a shop, in the desert, we have to labour along the line of His direction. Never allow this thought—“I am of no use where I am,” because you certainly can be of no use where you are not! Wherever He has engineered your circumstances, pray, ejaculate to Him all the time. Impulsive prayer, the prayer that looks so futile, is the thing God heeds more than anything else. Jesus says—“If ye abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you” (rv). Think what an astonishment it will be when the veil is lifted, to find the number of souls that have been reaped for Jesus because our disposition had made Him Master, and we were in the habit of taking our orders from Him. Our Lord in one of His parables reveals that God sows His saints in the places that are most useless according to the judgment of the world; He puts them where He likes. Where God is being glorified is where He puts His saints, and we are no judge of where that is.
(c) The Distinctness of the Way (John 14:6)
The Master says He is the Way; then abide in Him. He says He is the Truth; then believe in Him. He says He is the Life; then live on Him.
Prayer is the answer to every problem there is. How else could Our Lord’s command in John 14:1 be fulfilled in our experience? How could we have an untroubled heart if we believed that the heathen who had not heard the Gospel were damned? What would the Redemption of Jesus Christ be worth, of what use would the revelation given in John 3:16 be, if it depended on the laggard laziness of Christians as to whether men are to be saved or not?
We have to live depending on Jesus Christ’s wisdom, not on our own. He is the Master, and the problem is His, not ours. We have to use the key He gives us, the key of prayer. Our Lord puts the key into our hands, and we have to learn to pray under His direction. That is the simplicity which He says His Father will bless.