Matthew chapter 9 today. Matthew chapter number 9.
And I want to get into more on this.
You see, God's not looking for a multitude.
And I want to show you that it's not a huge group of people
that's really needed to make this vision become a reality.
God doesn't need a multitude to accomplish this goal.
He just needs a group of people that have a vision.
And I'm going to prove that to you from the book of Matthew.
My favorite part of the Bible is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
The four gospels to me are the heart of the Bible.
I feel like everything before them is just pointing unto Jesus Christ.
Everything after them is just explaining and expounding what happened.
To me, this is the heart of the Bible here.
And in Matthew 9 verse 36 it says this,
But when he saw, this is Jesus Christ, when he saw the multitudes,
he was moved with compassion on them because they fainted
and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd.
Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous,
but the laborers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth laborers into his harvest.
But wait a minute, look at the next verse.
I need to turn there one second.
Matthew 10, 1.
He said, the laborers are few.
Pray that God will send them, laborers.
But he says in verse number 1, what he called unto him is what?
Twelve.
Twelve disciples.
That's who he sent out to preach.
And he gave them power, he sent them out to preach the word of God.
He looked at the multitude and he saw a bunch of people
that were as sheep having no shepherd.
And he said, man, the harvest is plenteous, but the laborers are few.
Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest,
that he will send forth laborers into the harvest.
He said, these twelve is who I'm going to send.
Twelve people.
Are there twelve people in this room tonight?
Are there twelve people in Verity Baptist Church?
These are the twelve men, eleven men, one of them will be replaced.
The Bible says they turned the world upside down.
The Bible says they filled Jerusalem with their doctrine.
It's not a multitude that we need.
We just need laborers.
We just need the people that we do have to be laborers.
Now a lot of people look at the church and say,
wow, we just have more people in the church.
We just need the people that are in the church to be laborers.
These people were already in church.
The multitude was gathered to hear Jesus preach.
He looked on them and said, boy, I wish we had an even bigger crowd.
Then we could have the Houston Astrodome to put everybody in.
No, he didn't.
He said, you know, man, I just wish that we would get some laborers.
You know, I mean, okay, it's great that we have a multitude of people.
Of course, these people are here today and gone tomorrow.
Of course, these people are going to be all dispersed and scattered abroad.
But he said, we need laborers.
He had twelve.
Go, if you would, to chapter eight.
We're in chapter ten.
I'm going to show you some things in chapter eight.