“He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.”
– Proverbs 10:5
It’s a pretty simple proverb. When you think about it, if you sleep in the middle of harvest time, as a son, you bring shame to the father. You do not honor the father to stay inside sleeping all day when it’s harvest time outside. You go. So a simple proverb that I want to apply to what Jesus said in Matthew chapter nine, verses 37 and 38. He said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful.” The Bible just finished saying that Jesus was looking out at all the multitudes around them, how they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
Our Need for God’s Grace and Redemption
He’s looking at people who are separated from the Father by their sin, in need of grace and love and redemption. And Jesus turns to his disciples and he says, “There’s a plentiful harvest.” And he goes on to say, “The problem is not there’s not a great harvest. The problem is the workers are few.” In other words, the people who should be working the harvest are asleep in the house. So he says, “Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out more workers into the harvest field.” See it.
Let’s pray for laborers to be sent by God out into the harvest.
Proverbs 10:5 Prays for the Unreached
And we see the same thing in John 4, we could talk about that but the reality is in the world today, the harvest is plentiful. There are so many people who are waiting to hear the gospel, over two billion of them who have little to no knowledge of the gospel. All throughout this Pray The Word podcast, we oftentimes pray for unreached people. And I’m using an app called Unreached of the Day from Joshua Project that just, you can download, use it every day. I would encourage you to. And just to open your eyes, it’ll open your eyes to the harvest.
Like today, the Wakhi people in Tajikistan, no Christians. There are no known Christian believers among the Wakhi people in Tajikistan. And so, the harvest is plentiful, it’s true. So are we asleep in the house? Proverbs chapter 10 is clear, it does not honor the father for the children to be asleep in the house. So let’s honor our Father, let’s go into the harvest. And it’s not just among the Wakhi in Tajikistan. It’s there, yes, and it’s right around us. There are people, Jesus is saying, just hear him saying that right now, when you look at the community, the city around you, “The harvest is plentiful.” There are people who are waiting to hear the gospel. Like go, speak it to them, work in the harvest. Do that here and do that in places where the gospel’s not yet gone.
Proverbs 10:5 Prays for Compassionate Missionaries
So we pray according to Your Word right now, Lord Jesus, we’re asking you to send out more workers into the harvest field. Send us out, send others out. Please, oh God, today. Right where we live. Send us into the harvest field, help us to proclaim the gospel, give us boldness, give us compassion to proclaim the gospel in the harvest field. And then, oh God, we pray for the Wakhi in Tajikistan, we pray that somebody would go to that harvest field.
Send the missionary there, send a believer from churches that are near there. Although we know there’s not a lot of churches in Tajikistan, but God, please send others in Tajikistan, from around that area, God, please send workers. Send somebody who’s listening right now to the Wakhi in Tajikistan. God, we pray, send us out to take the gospel where it’s not yet gone, into a plentiful harvest. Oh God, help us to honor you by going out of the house, by working in the harvest fields while we still have time. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder of Radical, an organization that makes Jesus known among the nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Don’t Hold Back, and How to Read the Bible.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
