Pastor David Watson anchors this sermon in Matthew 9:35-38, a passage he describes as the very reason his family packed up and moved fifteen hours from home to help plant a church in Lavon, Texas. Using the literary structure of a chiasm — a device Matthew employs across chapters 4 through 9 — Pastor David shows how Jesus repeatedly and intentionally saw the crowds that everyone else overlooked: the distressed, the dejected, the broken, and the lost. Jesus didn't wag a finger at their condition. Instead, He felt splanknizomai — a deep, gut-level, physical compassion that forced a response. And then He turned to His disciples and asked the question that drives this entire sermon: the harvest is abundant, but the workers are few — so who is going to care for people like that?

Pastor David makes clear that Jesus wasn't speaking to an institution or an organization. He was speaking to individuals — followers who had said yes to His call. The corporate answer of the church is we care, demonstrated by flinging the doors wide open and casting the net as far as it will reach. But the personal answer has to come from each believer individually. Pastor David's response, and the motto his family lives by, is: love hard, pray hard, work hard. To love hard means to carry a fierce, sacrificial burden for broken people the way Jesus did — even at the risk of rejection. To pray hard means to get on your knees and beg the Lord of the harvest before anything else moves. And to work hard means to remember that there is no harvest problem — only a worker shortage — and that every follower of Jesus has been commissioned and empowered to go.