Harvest — For The Life Of The World

Pentecost, 2025

Text: Acts 2:1–21, John 6:22-33, Gen. 11:1-9

In the name of Jesus, Amen!

People tend to overestimate themselves, and underestimate God. In our Old Testament reading, Genesis chapter 11, when people tried to challenge God and to build a tower with its top reaching to the heavens, God went down and confused their language. Eventually, they left the tower unfinished and were dispersed all over the earth. Before the day of Pentecost, our second lesson tells us that there were only 120 disciples of Jesus. You may say, the size is OK for a church. However, in order to carry out Jesus’ Great Commission to make disciples of all nations starting in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the end of the earth, 120 people are not enough. It’s mission impossible. However, when the Holy Spirit comes, they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance, proclaiming the mighty works of God in Christ Jesus. After Peter preaching the Gospel, 3000 were baptized on that day. The same thing already happened before the day of Pentecost, when the Word becoming flesh preached the Good News and healed the sick, the masses followed Jesus. We can see, when our Lord Jesus and His Spirit open the door according to His timing and His plan, you will see that the fields of the Gospel are white for harvest, only to find that more workers are needed as Jesus says in Matthew chapter 9, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

In order to carry out God’s Mission to share the life-saving message of Jesus Christ, we need to be ready and rely on God as a church as well as individual Christians. We need to be “clothed with power from on high” as Jesus instructed the disciples to wait for the sending of the Spirit, because it’s the power of the Holy Spirit to call people by the Gospel, enlighten them with His gifts, sanctify and keep them in the true faith. However, before the disciples were “clothed with power from on high” on the day of Pentecost, there were times when they didn’t understand what Jesus was saying before the glorification of the Cross, when they were so afraid of Jews that they shut themselves in a house with closed doors before and after Jesus’ crucifixion, but were overjoyed to see the resurrected Jesus, and finally when they gathered and prayed waiting for the promise of the Father and the Son to send the Holy Spirit. What the disciples had previously experienced before the day of Pentecost means is that before they could share Jesus and His Word with others, they needed to learn the Truth from Jesus, their faith needed to be strengthened by the cross of Christ, and then they needed to pray and wait for God’s timing of sending the Spirit. The Holy Spirit DID come as promised on the day of Pentecost, to draw people to listen, and to move them to believe by the preaching of the Gospel. The same is true with us. To share Jesus, first you need to have Jesus yourself. To feed the Word to others, first you need to receive the Word. To preach the Gospel, first you need to learn the Truth of the Gospel, that is to know who Jesus really is and what He has done for us. In today’s Gospel lesson, we learn that all the people who were seeking after Jesus had a wrong idea of why they should follow Him, as Jesus pointed out, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” After saying this, Jesus told them, and now He is telling us, what we really need. We need Jesus Himself, the true Bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. Jesus is the living Bread for the life of the world.

In order to carry out the mission and build up the church, the Holy Spirit bestows many gifts and abilities to us. Today, based on the readings, we concentrate on the ability of language. Ever since the tower of Babel, the people who were dispersed over all the earth have been living in sin with hearts alienated from God and from each other. People tend to speak in their own language only with those whom they are familiar with, and only within a country, a province, a small region, or even a small village. In China, there are 56 ethnic groups, more than 80 languages, and 3000 dialects. In some places, the people living in one village can’t communicate with the people in another village over a small mountain or across a small river. Without Mandarin, the official Chinese language, people in different places in China cannot understand each other.

In contrast, on the day of Pentecost, the disciples though mostly from the small region of Galilee, all of a sudden were speaking in another language so that the people from “every nation under heaven” could understand what they were saying, “because each one was hearing them speak in his own language”, telling “the mighty works of God” in Christ Jesus. So, what happened. What makes the difference? The Holy Spirit coming down from heaven. Ever since the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gives the church the ability of language, translating the Bible and theological materials, training and sending missionaries overseas, and in some cases, some pastors preaching and teaching in several languages at the same time. As the Gospel reaching to the Gentiles, the power of the Holy Spirit unites the people from every nation, every ethnic group, and every people speaking their own dialect with one single spiritual language. This spiritual language is the voice of the Holy Spirit. The same Spirit who wrote the Bible teaches the Word to the children of God who are born from above of the same Spirit, as St. Paul says in Ephesians. “There is one body and one Spirit—just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

Thanks be to God! The purpose of the Holy Spirit to give the church abilities of language is to Speak the Word of God with the same Voice, loud and clear, proclaiming the mighty works of God in Christ Jesus, because the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Jesus, who is the true and living Bread that comes from heaven for the life of every nation, every tribe, and every tongue. So, let us pray and wait for the Spirit to open the door to the mission fields. In the mean time, we ask God to equip us with His Word and gifts so that we can prepare ourselves to make a defense to anyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us, that is to share the Gospel, because as Jesus says, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few”. The Lord of the harvest will continue to send out workers to proclaim Jesus Christ, His death and His resurrection for the life of the world.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen!