The sermon opens with a brief reflection on the hymn "Speak, O Lord" (referred to via Stuart Townend's "The Perfect Wisdom of Our God"), drawing on Job's confession of God's incomprehensible sovereignty to frame the congregation's posture of humble trust before turning to the main text. The preacher then reads Matthew 9:35 through 10:15, the account of Jesus surveying the crowds, feeling compassion for them, and commissioning his twelve disciples as "apostles" — from the Greek apostolo, meaning "sent one" — to extend his own ministry of preaching, healing, and casting out unclean spirits. The sermon is structured around three things this passage reveals about Jesus: his heart of sending, his plan of sending, and his principles of sending.

The sermon first argues that compassion, mentioned more often of Jesus than any other emotion in the Synoptic Gospels, is the governing motive behind his commissioning of the disciples. Matthew 9:36 pictures the crowds as "sheep without a shepherd," a shepherding metaphor rooted in the Old Testament in which God's people, helpless and prone to wander, are entrusted to human under-shepherds who, as Ezekiel 34 laments, exploit rather than feed the flock. Because these under-shepherds fail, God himself promises in Ezekiel 34 to search for and rescue his scattered sheep — a promise the sermon identifies as fulfilled in Jesus, the Good Shepherd of John 10 who lays down his life for the sheep. The sermon presses this compassion further by insisting that Scripture describes sinners as simultaneously evil and broken — perpetrators of evil and victims of evil at once — and warns against softening this tension in either direction, since only holding both truths together allows the church to grasp the depth of Christ's compassion for people who would ultimately crucify him. A second image, the harvest metaphor of Matthew 9:37-38, reinforces this compassion: though harvest language elsewhere (Isaiah 17; Matthew 13) signals God's end-time judgment, Jesus inverts it into an image of abundant salvation, declaring the harvest "plentiful" and calling the church to pray for laborers, so that his compassion becomes not merely a feeling but a powerful, judgment-reversing determination to save many rather than few.

The sermon then turns to Jesus's plan of sending. Because the laborers are genuinely few — effectively only Jesus and the now-imprisoned John the Baptist — Jesus deliberately incorporates his twelve ordinary disciples into his redemptive mission, giving them delegated authority to heal and to cast out demons, an authority that only makes sense because Jesus himself possesses it in fullness. The sermon notes that being "sent" means being called into both Christ's sufferings and his glory, so that Christian suffering is not incidental but purposeful, testifying that Christ is worth suffering for. Strikingly, this first mission is restricted to "the lost sheep of the house of Israel," excluding Gentiles and Samaritans (Matthew 10:5-6). The sermon offers two pragmatic reasons — the disciples' inexperience with cross-cultural ministry and the sheer difficulty of reaching Israel first — but locates the deeper, theological reason in Jesus's identity as Israel's promised king, sent first to his own covenant people. Echoing Israel's history of rejecting the prophets, and echoing John 1's "he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him," the sermon frames Jesus as a tragic king rejected by the nation he came to redeem, yet received by "those who were born not of blood... but of God," so that the Israel-only mission both fulfills the Abrahamic promise of blessing to the nations and anticipates Israel's rejection of her Messiah.

Finally, the sermon draws out two of Jesus's principles for those he sends. The first is radical trust in God's providence: the disciples are instructed to travel without money, bag, extra clothing, or sandals, relying instead on the hospitality of those they serve. The sermon carefully guards against two misapplications — that ministers should never be financially supported (rejected, since Scripture expects laborers to be sustained by those they serve) and that trusting God rules out realistic planning (rejected, since Jesus later instructs the same disciples in Luke 22 to take a bag and purse, showing the original instruction was mission-specific rather than a permanent rule). The second principle concerns response to rejection: disciples who are refused are told to "shake off the dust" from their feet, a customary gesture of complete disassociation, because Jesus warns that rejecting the message of the kingdom brings a judgment more severe than that of Sodom and Gomorrah — a warning reiterated in Matthew 11:20-24 against Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum. The sermon closes by insisting that Jesus does not come to condemn, since sinners already stand condemned by their own sin, but comes to save, and calls the congregation to imitate his compassion — seeing the lost as both broken and enslaved to sin — as they walk in the path of the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep.

Bible Verses Used

• Matthew 9:35-10:15: The primary sermon text, recounting Jesus's compassion for the crowds and his commissioning of the twelve disciples as apostles.

• Ezekiel 34: Cited to explain the Old Testament shepherding metaphor, contrasting Israel's failed human shepherds with God's promise to personally seek out and rescue his scattered sheep.

• Psalm 23: Referenced as the classic expression of God as the Good Shepherd who cares for and guides his people.

• John 10: Used at the close of the sermon to identify Jesus as the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.

• John 1: Cited for "he came to his own, and his own people did not receive him... but to all who did receive him," framing Israel's rejection and the reception of Christ by those born of God.

• Isaiah 17: Referenced as an Old Testament example of the harvest metaphor used to depict judgment, which Jesus reverses into an image of abundant salvation.

• Matthew 13: Cited as another instance of Jesus using harvest imagery to describe final judgment.

• Luke 22: Used to show that Jesus later reverses his earlier instruction to travel without provisions, demonstrating the original command was specific to that mission rather than a timeless rule.

• Matthew 11:20-24: Cited as Jesus's rebuke of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, reinforcing the warning that rejecting the gospel brings a judgment worse than Sodom's.