The Harvest is Plentiful: The Call to Labor for the Gospel

Acts 1 places the church at one of the most important moments in all of redemptive history. Jesus Christ has finished the work the Father gave Him to do. The eternal Son has taken on flesh, lived the righteous life sinners have failed to live, died as a substitute for His people, and risen triumphantly from the grave. Paul summarizes the heart of this message: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3–4, ESV). But Acts 1 reminds us that the gospel story does not stop with the resurrection. The risen Christ ascended into heaven, where He reigns as Lord, and the angels declared that “this Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11, ESV). We therefore live in a very particular moment on God’s redemptive timeline: Christ has accomplished salvation, Christ has risen, Christ reigns, the gospel is going to the nations, and Christ is coming again.

That truth gives evangelism its urgency. The gospel timeline moves from Christ’s incarnation → perfect life → substitutionary death → resurrection → ascension → present reign → promised return. We are living between the final two realities. Jesus reigns, and He will return. The church has not been placed in this period merely to maintain buildings, preserve traditions, conduct services, or make Christians comfortable while we wait for heaven. Jesus told His disciples, “you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8, ESV). The risen Christ has given His church a mission, and until He returns, that mission remains unfinished.

We must understand that Jesus can send His disciples as witnesses because there is something glorious for them to witness about. Christianity is not primarily a program for improving society. It is not a political movement for rescuing America. It is not a moral system designed to make bad people behave better. Christianity announces something God has done in history. The Son of God entered our fallen world, perfectly obeyed the law that we have broken, and willingly stood in the place of sinners upon the cross. Isaiah had foretold, “the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53:6, ESV). Jesus bore the wrath our sins deserved, satisfied divine justice, and rose bodily from the grave. Evangelism, therefore, is not asking people to become religious. We are announcing that the crucified Jesus is alive, that He reigns, and that forgiveness and eternal life are offered to everyone who repents and believes in Him.

This is why the spiritual condition of the United States should deeply concern the church. Recent national research reports that approximately 62 percent of American adults identify themselves as Christians, compared with 78 percent in 2007, while approximately 29 percent now identify as religiously unaffiliated. The same research found that about 22 percent of American adults were raised Christian but no longer identify as Christian. These statistics cannot tell us who has truly been born again ~ only God knows the heart ~ but they do reveal something important about the mission field surrounding us. America should not be treated as though it has already been evangelized simply because churches stand along its highways and Christian vocabulary remains embedded in parts of its culture.

Indeed, familiarity with Christianity may sometimes conceal the need for evangelism. Millions of Americans know the words Jesus, cross, Bible, and church without understanding the biblical gospel. Others may call themselves Christians because their parents were Christians, because they were baptized as children, because they occasionally attend church, or because Christianity describes their cultural background. But Jesus did not say that sinners need a religious heritage. He said, “You must be born again” (John 3:7, ESV). Scripture does not teach that church attendance, baptism, morality, patriotism, or family tradition reconciles a sinner to God. “Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1, ESV). Our communities are filled not with people who only need invitations to church, they are filled with people who need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The urgency becomes even clearer when we consider the generations coming behind us. Recent research indicates that younger American adults are considerably less religious than older generations, and that the long-term decline in Christian identification has occurred across every major region of the country. That should especially challenge older believers. Retirement from a career is not retirement from discipleship, and advancing age does not cancel the Great Commission. Some of the most valuable evangelists in a congregation may be those who have walked with Christ for forty, fifty, or sixty years. They have children, grandchildren, neighbors, former coworkers, doctors, caregivers, friends, and acquaintances who need Jesus. If God has given us years of knowing His faithfulness, those years ought to give weight to our testimony which cannot remain silent.

But our urgency must never become panic. The church must resist the temptation to look at cultural change and conclude that everything depends upon us. Acts 1 will not permit such thinking. Before Jesus commanded His disciples to witness, He promised them power: “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8, ESV). The mission belongs to Jesus, and the power belongs to God. We cannot regenerate a single sinner. We cannot argue a dead heart into life. We cannot manipulate someone into the kingdom. Salvation belongs to the Lord. God “made us alive together with Christ” (Ephesians 2:5, ESV), and Jesus declared, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44, ESV). Biblical evangelism therefore combines tremendous urgency with tremendous confidence. We speak urgently because sinners must hear, but we speak confidently because God is sovereign in salvation.

That sovereignty does not make evangelism unnecessary; it guarantees that evangelism will not ultimately be fruitless. God has ordained not only whom He will save but also the means by which they will hear. Paul asks, “ How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard?^[c] And how are they to hear without someone preaching? ¹⁵ And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” ¹⁶ But they have not all obeyed the gospel. For Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed what he has heard from us?” ¹⁷ So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:14-17, ESV). Jesus is gathering His people through the proclamation of His gospel. Missions and evangelism are consequences of the finished work of Jesus. We are not attempting to persuade people to make Jesus King. We proclaim that the crucified Jesus is the risen and reigning King, and we call sinners everywhere to repent and believe in Him.

This also means that our evangelism must contain an actual gospel. We have sometimes substituted invitations for proclamation. “Come to church” is a good invitation, but it is not the gospel. “God loves you” is wonderfully true when biblically understood, but by itself it does not explain the gospel. “Jesus can improve your life” falls far short of the apostolic message. We must tell people who God is: holy, righteous, sovereign, and Creator of all. We must tell them what sin is: rebellion against the God who made us. We must tell them that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23, ESV) and that “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23, ESV). Then we must tell them the glorious news that Christ bore the judgment sinners deserve, rose victorious over death, and now commands “all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30, ESV). Evangelism speaks enough truth for a sinner to understand both the terrible reality from which he must be saved and the glorious Savior to whom he must flee.

Perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to evangelism in American churches is not ignorance but silence. We know the Great Commission. We believe the gospel. We affirm that hell is real and Jesus is the only Savior. Still, we can live entire weeks without telling one unbeliever about Jesus. We speak freely about politics, sports, weather, grandchildren, work, medical appointments, vacations, and the condition of the country, but suddenly become hesitant when the conversation turns toward eternity. We should ask ourselves a difficult question: If we truly believe what we say we believe about Jesus, sin, judgment, heaven, hell, and eternity, why are we so quiet? Paul said, “knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others” (2 Corinthians 5:11, ESV). A church convinced of eternal realities cannot remain indefinitely silent.

Our fear of man must therefore be confronted with the lordship of Jesus Christ. Some Christians fear awkward conversations. Others fear rejection, ridicule, damaged relationships, or simply not knowing how to answer every question. But evangelism does not require us to possess every answer. The first disciples were witnesses. A witness tells what he knows to be true. We can tell someone, “I was guilty before a holy God, and Jesus is my only hope. He died for sinners. He rose from the grave. He commands us to repent and believe, and He promises eternal life to everyone who comes to Him.” We can open the Scriptures with someone. We can invite questions. We can admit when we do not know an answer and then search the Bible together. The power of evangelism does not lie in our eloquence. Paul said that the gospel “is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” (Romans 1:16, ESV).

And the mission field is not merely somewhere overseas. Acts 1:8 begins in Jerusalem before moving outward to Judea, Samaria, and the end of the earth. The church must care deeply about unreached peoples across the world while refusing to overlook unbelievers across the street. Your “Jerusalem” may include the house beside yours, the person sitting across from you at lunch, the coworker you have known for fifteen years, the adult child who has walked away from the faith, or the grandchild who knows Christian language but shows no evidence of knowing Jesus. We should support missionaries, send missionaries, pray for missionaries, and perhaps become missionaries ~ but we must also recognize that every Christian already lives on a mission field. Wherever God has providentially placed us, there are people who will one day stand before Jesus Christ.

That reality introduces an urgency deeper than demographic statistics. We evangelize America not primarily because Christianity's cultural influence has declined, but because people die. “It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Hebrews 9:27, ESV). Every person we meet is moving toward eternity. The neighbor whose lawn you pass, the waitress who fills your glass, the teenager staring at a phone, the elderly man in the nursing home, and the successful businessman who seems to have everything under control will all stand before God. We do not know how long they have, and neither do we know how long we have. James reminds us, “you do not know what tomorrow will bring” (James 4:14, ESV). The opportunity we postpone today is not guaranteed tomorrow.

Furthermore, Acts 1 gives us an even greater reason for urgency: Jesus Christ is coming again. The angels did not allow the disciples to stand staring indefinitely into heaven. “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking into heaven? This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11, ESV). The Savior who ascended will return. History is not wandering aimlessly toward an uncertain conclusion. It is moving toward the appearing of the King. The church, ultimately, lives between Jesus's ascension and Jesus's return, and this age is the age of gospel proclamation. Revelation pictures the final triumph: “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15, ESV). Every nation will bow before Him. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. The only question is whether a person will meet Him as the Savior in whom he has trusted or as the Judge he has rejected.

So, church, this is not the hour for comfortable Christianity. This is not the time merely to lament what America has become. We have something infinitely better than nostalgia for what America once was. We have a gospel. Jesus has come. Jesus has obeyed. Jesus has died. Jesus has risen. Jesus has ascended. Jesus reigns. Jesus saves sinners. And Jesus is coming again. Until that day, He has commanded us to be His witnesses. Pray for the lost by name. Ask God to open doors. Invite your neighbor to read the Gospel of John with you. Speak to your children and grandchildren about their souls. Tell a coworker what Jesus has done. Invite someone to church ~ but do not merely invite them to church; tell them why they need Jesus. Support the sending of missionaries, and live as a missionary where God has placed you. We do not know how much time remains before Jesus returns, and we do not know how much time remains for the person standing in front of us. But we know what time it is on God's redemptive calendar: the King has risen, the King reigns, the gospel is going out to the nations, and the King is coming again. Therefore, while there is still time, let us go and make disciples.