Sermon for June 14, 2026, Third Sunday after Pentecost

Matthew 9:35-10:8 (Third Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 6—Series A)

“The Lord Has Compassion on You”

Lutheran Church of Our Redeemer, Enfield CT

June 14, 2026

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Our text is the Gospel Reading from Matthew 9 and 10:

³⁵And Jesus began to go around all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and every sickness. ³⁶And when He saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd. ³⁷Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. ³⁸Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send workers into His harvest.” ¹And after He had called His Twelve disciples, He gave them authority to cast out unclean spirits and to heal every disease and every sickness. ²Now the names of the Twelve apostles are these: Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, and James the son of Zebedee and his brother John, ³Philip and Bartholomew, Thomas and Matthew the tax collector, James the son of Alphaeus and Thaddeus, ⁴Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariott, the one who betrayed Him. ⁵These Twelve Jesus sent out, having instructed them, saying, “Do not depart into a way that leads to the Gentiles, and do not enter into a Samaritan city. ⁶But go, rather, to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. ⁷And as you are going, preach and say, ‘The reign of heaven stands near.’ ⁸Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. Freely you received; freely give.”

          Certain words seem to jump off the page of Scripture and grab our attention. Matthew 9:36 is one of these verses: “And when [Jesus] saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd.” Let’s explore those two words for a moment.

·        Harassed—to be troubled or bothered; to be afflicted, to be caused to suffer.

·        Dejected—to be thrown down with loss of hope; discouraged.

          Currently, we have 55 names on our prayer list for whom we pray each Sunday morning. Some of them, many of us know personally; some are known only by a few of us. To you, that person may just be a name because you do not know them or their situation. Do you suppose that any of those for whom we pray feel harassed and dejected? Yes, I think so too. Disease and sickness are troublers that afflict and cause suffering of body, mind, and spirit. Tragedies in life harass people and cause them to become discouraged and laid low. Last Saturday, my daughter’s friends’ home caught fire. They came home to see their house aflame. Although some possessions are salvageable, they lost most everything including several pets. Thankfully, the family was not hurt or injured in the fire, but the distress this has caused is almost unthinkable. Their lives uprooted. Harassed and dejected, they must now move forward. And our community is helping with that. There will be a benefit concert featuring the band at the Enfield High School auditorium this Thursday, June 18, at 6:00 p.m. All donations will go directly to this family in need.

          Now, let’s move even more personally and look at our own lives. Are you distressed and discouraged by an event, ongoing situations, sickness, or pain in your life? Jesus said plainly in the Sermon on the Mount, “Sufficient for the day is its own trouble” (Matt. 6:34 ESV). And it seems that “trouble” sometimes likes to hang around for more than a day. And so, during His earthly ministry, Jesus Christ looked at the people to whom He was sent. He saw what only He could see as true God and true Man—the people were harassed and dejected like sheep without a shepherd. In compassion, He sees us in our troubles and discouragement also.

          Jesus, keeping us grounded in the reality of a fallen creation, said, “In the world you have trouble and suffering”—tribulation (John 16:33 NET). It is the way of life in a world messed up by sin as we are people who are also corrupted by sin and subjected to frailty and death. We are harassed and become dejected by sickness, natural disasters, emotional distress, and worry about our daily needs.

          Our sinful human flesh, the world around us, and the devil also trouble us, cause suffering, and leave us discouraged, feeling like there is no hope. We know and feel the guilt of our sins as God’s Law confronts us. Like a mirror, the Law shows us that we have failed always to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. When we look at the Commandments, we see how we have failed always to love our neighbors, beginning with our closest neighbors—spouse and children.

Now, it doesn’t take long to see that, in our sinfulness, we are the ones who wander from the Lord and His Word. God says, “You shall not,” and we say, “Let me just try it my way.” The Lord says, “Do this,” and we say, “No.” The devil, world, and our own flesh work to pull us away from God and His Word, to tear us apart from Him, leaving us to our own devices that cannot help and save us. That’s why God repeatedly refers to His people in both the Old and New Testaments as “lost sheep.” Jeremiah 50:6, “My people have been lost sheep. Their shepherds have led them astray, turning them away on the mountains. From mountain to hill they have gone. They have forgotten their fold.” Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way.” Jesus in our text this morning saw the crowd as lost sheep without a shepherd. And St. Peter has written, “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Peter 2:25).

Listen to that! The lost have been found! The harassed and dejected have received compassion and have been brought back into the fold of their heavenly Father! Jesus saw our weakness and our helplessness in sin. He knows our wandering and our complete inability to find our way back to Him. And the Lord Jesus has had compassion on us.

St. Paul in our Epistle lesson described the compassion of our Lord and Savior to us who are harassed and dejected: “For while we were still weak”—troubled and brought low by sin and its consequences—“at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation” (Rom. 5:6-11 ESV).

The lost have been found! The harassed and dejected have received compassion and have been brought back into the fold of their heavenly Father! This has taken place because Jesus has suffered and died for our sins on the cross, winning forgiveness with His shed blood. Jesus’ compassion, love, and mercy for you took Him to the suffering of death and hell on the cross so that you might be reconciled to your heavenly Father. Through the forgiveness of sins that Christ purchased for you, you are declared not guilty of sin. You are once again at peace with God and are no longer His enemies, no longer wayward and lost sheep.

Now, by grace through the gift of saving faith, you have a Good Shepherd, the very same Shepherd who died and rose again to save you from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. From John 10, Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. . . . I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:11-18 ESV).

Your Good Shepherd, Jesus, has brought you, His “other sheep,” into His flock through the hearing of the Good News of His reign and rule. Paul proclaims, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17 ESV). Jesus Himself preached the Good News while healing every disease and every sickness. He then chose the Twelve apostles and sent them out to proclaim the Good News of the reign of heaven that had drawn near and was now here in the person and work of Jesus. Following Jesus’ death and resurrection, filled with the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, these Apostles went and preached the message of Christ crucified and risen, this time, not only to lost sheep of the house of Israel, but the to Gentiles and the Samaritans. Later, some—like Matthew, John, Peter, and Paul—would also write the inspired Word of God in Gospels and Letters.

It is this inspired, without error Word that we have heard and believed. Through that Word, the Holy Spirit has brought us to saving faith and trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior. And the Word delivers to us exactly what it promises—the forgiveness of sins, rescue from death and the devil, and eternal salvation. This Word, along with the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, strengthen our faith, delivering the very compassion of Jesus to us in Word and sign.

Through the Gospel Word of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we receive His love, compassion, and mercy in the forgiveness of our sins. We receive from our Lord His very presence in our troubles through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit—“Christ in you” (Col. 1:27 ESV). The Spirit brings Christ Himself to us and places the Savior within us through the wonderful gift of His Word and the Sacrament where we eat and drink His Body and Blood with the bread and wine. Thus, it is most certainly true that Jesus is with us always, even to the end of the age, exactly as His Word promises is Matthew 28. When you and I are harassed and dejected, Jesus is present through the Holy Spirit. Again the Savior’s own Word of Promise, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (John 14:16-20 ESV).

Listen as the Lord Himself speaks His Word of compassion to you through Isaiah the prophet: “Thus says the Lord: “In a time of favor I have answered you; in a day of salvation I have helped you; . . . Sing for joy, O heavens, and exult, O earth; break forth, O mountains, into singing! For the Lord has comforted his people and will have compassion on his afflicted. But Zion said, ‘The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.’ Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands” (Is. 49:8, 13-16a ESV).

Your day of salvation has come through the Lord Jesus Christ. Your sins are forgiven. You have eternal life. Although you are harassed and dejected in this world because of sin and the fallen creation, you are not alone. Your Good Shepherd and Savior Jesus is with you. His compassion surrounds you through the message of His Word. You are not forgotten no matter what you go through. You are engraved in the very palms of His hands. And remember, those are the hands still marked with the nails. This remains the proof of His love and compassion to you all your days and unto life everlasting. Amen.