This is my last visit with you before going overseas. Two weeks from Tuesday, I am scheduled to leave for ministry in France for a national convention. Then I go to West Africa at the Bible school, with students and national pastors. In Ivory Coast in Abidjan, they will rent the Convention Hall for the occasion for Sunday. They are bringing together ministers of different denominations for Sunday. Then, during the week I will be at the Bible school.
Then in Indonesia, I am with the missionaries for a week, with the national pastors for another week. Then Australia and back to Africa returning according to my current schedule on August 13th. I trust you will remember us in your prayers, Wife too, the girls and myself. This is the way it goes year after year.
Would you like to know what my ticket cost? 75 cents. Do not look so worried. I am not asking you for it! I am only telling you how great a God we have. Really, it is $2,145.00 There is no problem, as this Assembly has been a steady supporter. Mrs. Shoal has always been a Beuttler booster. So for a number of years now, you folk have really stood by me very faithfully with your monthly offering that you send to Springfield, and have continued to do so to the present day. I appreciate it very much and want to thank you.
The Lord laid upon my heart somewhat of a missionary message. I had wondered why, but I have learned to leave the wonderment to Him. You never know who is here, a young person even a child. We only know one thing, that is, God knows what He is doing, so I make no apologies.
Most of you know that I am leaving the school. This coming week is my last week of teaching. In the Fall, I will be going out to meetings in different churches in weekend ministry. Then come January, Mrs. Beuttler and I expect to go to the South Pacific. On route we take in Hawaii and Samoa, especially New Zealand, Australia, an open-ended tour of ministry with a one-way ticket and keep meandering along as God leads. There appears to be quite a bit of work still left ahead.
“After these things the Lord appointed other seventy also, and sent them two and two before His face into every city and place, where He himself would come. Therefore said He to them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest.” Luke 10:1-2
The Lord appointed other seventy also. I want to touch on the area of a divine appointment. God appoints people for specific work. All of us have some kind of an appointment. In fact, each person in the world, saved or unsaved, has an appointment from God. Even the unsaved have a divine appointment. It says, “It is appointed to man once to die, and after that the judgment.”
Everybody has an appointment, which is an appointment with death. We have an appointment to stand before God in the judgment. We are appointed to be saved, but today I feel more particularly about specialized appointments. Did you notice what the scripture says, “Therefore said He to them, The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few; pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest.”
I am very burdened for the work for this summer, the work of teaching. The Lord is addressing all of His people to take an interest in missionary work. Here particularly we are to pray because the laborers are few. The tourist are many, but the laborers are few. In the final analysis, the One who sends laborers into the world’s harvest fields is the Lord. God gives divine appointments. All of us are to pray that the Lord would send forth more laborers.
All of us have a part in this missionary work. One part that we should play, is to be engaged in prayer not only for those who already have their appointments and are on the field, but we are to pray that more will make themselves available to work in the Lord’s harvest field. This does not mean others will have to go overseas as I do. The Lord said, “The field is the world.” Johnsville is also part of this field. This means more than laborers being sent to Africa, but to send forth laborers into the harvest field, as here is also a harvest field.
I like to share with you about this divine appointment in Acts:
“Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas and Simeon that was called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen, which had been brought up with Herod the tetrarch, and Saul. As they ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them. And when they had fasted and prayed, and laid their hands on them, they sent them away. So they, being sent forth by the Holy Ghost, departed to Seleucia; and from thence they sailed to Cyprus.” Acts 13:1-4
Here is a working together between these men that were ministering to the Lord, and the individuals which God, in His providence, had already appointed. They ministered to the Lord in fasting and prayer. Today people do not believe much in fasting. The fact still remains that the Church needs to engage in fasting from time to time.
These ministered to the Lord in fasting and prayer. Apparently they had in mind what we would call today, the mission field. From all appearance in the chapter, they were aware of certain places that were in great need of the Gospel, someone needed to be sent and they looked to the Lord to discover who was to go. Then the Spirit of God spoke. I rather think that it came through a prophetic utterance: “Separate me Barnabas and Saul unto the work whereunto I have called them.”
There is a blending here between human activity of ministering to the Lord in fasting and prayer, and the appointment which God had made concerning these men. Notice in II Timothy 1:11:
“Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles.”
There are those who hold several appointments at the same time. The thought of appointment is having been set aside, appointed to a specific task. Yesterday Wife and I were on Long Island. We were visiting her Mother who is past 92. With her faint voice yesterday she said, “Are you going to Europe again?”
Wife said, “Yes, he is going to Europe, Africa, and Australia.” She faintly said, “Isn’t there enough work to do right here?” There is enough work to do, but she does not understand that when God gives an appointment to go, you cannot say, “Isn’t there enough work to do right here?” We’re under an appointment and human rationalization doesn’t necessarily coincide with a divine appointment.
I am appointed to go overseas. I am moving in the will of God, and God selects different individuals to do different kinds of work in His vineyard because He is the Lord of the harvest. Not only does God appoint, but God un-appoints. How does God un-appoint, or cancel appointments?
“Lift not up your horn on high; speak not with a stiff neck. For promotion comes neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from the south. But God is the judge; He puts down one, and sets up another.” Psalm 75:5-7
“Lift not up your horn on high,” that is to say, do not get too confident. God is sovereign and He appoints and He un-appoints. Many years ago now, the Lord very providentially appointed me pastor of a certain assembly. There was another man in the picture who really had been selected by the church. When I got there to help out, they thought I should be the pastor.
The Chairman said, “The people think you should be the pastor, but they already chose another pastor. What can we do?” I said nothing. Then the brother said, “Well, let’s pray.” I thought, “I have nothing to pray about. When he comes, I leave.” We knelt down and he did the praying.
The Lord spoke deep within me, “Behold I have set before you an open door and no man can shut it.” I knew that I had an appointment from God, and nobody was going to be able to un-appoint me. And so it was. God appoints, He un-appoints.
In Acts 1:20 concerning Judas who sold the Lord it says, and his bishopric let another take. That bishopric means his overseer-ship. The appointment of Judas was un-appointed by the very same one who had appointed him because Judas sold his master for 30 pieces of silver.
If you recall, God un-appointed King Saul. God had appointed him in response to the people’s wishes, but later on Saul became independent of God. He refused to bend his will to the will of God. Saul was self-assertive, bent on having his own way. One day God said these fateful words through Samuel: “It repented me that I have made Saul king. Behold the Lord has sought him a man after his own heart.”
God had chosen Saul to be king over Israel, but Saul wanted his own way. Later on God said: “It repented Me that I have made Saul king.” When God has appointed a person, that that person would so disappoint God that God says, “I am sorry. I am going to look for somebody else.”
Referring to the same incident in Acts 13:22, the term “found” is used. I’m not reading the scripture for time’s sake. There it says, “The Lord found... a man after His own heart.” In Samuel it says, “The Lord sought him a man after his own heart.” In Acts it says that the Lord found him. So God actually seeks individuals whom He can appoint, and God finds them.
We have the mission field in mind, and I am speaking from the standpoint of prayer, of looking to God definitely to send forth the right kind of laborers, the laborers He really needs. There are many who are not really adequately equipped by God for the work that God needs to be done.
The church is repeating a historic mistake. When David wanted to fight Goliath? Saul took his own armor, his coat of mail, his spear, his sword, his shield and put it on David. Now Saul was a big warrior. David was a little shepherd boy and I can just about see that little boy stumbling around with this heavy coat of mail and heavy spear and what have you.
The church is doing the same thing today, spending time, effort and oodles of money to put Saul’s armor on God’s little David’s. After God’s little David’s have been fully equipped with the equipment of the world to fight the Lord’s battles, they finally have to come to the place to say, “I can’t use it,” and lay aside their huge spear and coat of mail and go back to their sling shots and faith in God to kill the giants.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Proverbs 29:18
This is why we need to pray for laborers who are God-equipped to do the work. It is one thing to be equipped with the wisdom of this world, but it is another to be equipped with the equipment of God, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” The idea here is: where there is no revelation, where there is no message from God that ministers to the needs of the people, those people perish.
In the Word, there are at least three aspects to this vision as used here. Ezekiel had a vision, and it says in Ezekiel 1:1: “The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” Now the workers that we need to pray for God to raise up, are workers that know what it is to have an open heaven, not just an open encyclopedia, but an open heaven.
This is the paramount need. “The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God.” “Pray you therefore that the Lord will send forth laborers” who know what it is to have an open heaven, who know what it is to have a personal encounter with God, a personal revelation of God. That is the kind of laborer needed.
The same word vision is used in Ezekiel 11:25: “Then I spoke to them of the captivity all the things that the Lord had showed me.” I our students at school that if you will go and share with the people what God has shared with you, doing it with simplicity of words and with the anointing of the Spirit, there will be no lack of open doors for everywhere the people are hungry to hear from God.
In I Samuel 3:1 it says: “In those days there was no open vision.” That is to say that the people at that time did not hear from God. There was no prophet, there was no messenger, there was no laborer with a message from God. An open vision means there was no public revelation of God. The people were in need, but they did not hear from God because He did not have a human instrumentality though whom He could express Himself. And so it is today in many areas, the great need of such laborers through whom God can say what He wants to say to the people.
God needs people through whom He can articulate His words. Samuel came along and in the last part of the chapter says, “The Lord revealed himself again in Shiloh.” The reason was that in Samuel, God had found a boy that ministered to the Lord, a boy who gave God his ear. You see, that is the problem. We give ear to everything else, but this boy Samuel gave God his ear. The Lord visited him at night, and Samuel said, “Speak Lord for your servant hears.”
Solomon prayed, “Give thou Your servant a hearing ear.” I do not think God is looking for great preachers, but those who will give Him their ear. This is the message in Hosea. Fifteen times in that book, the Lord says, “hear.” In Hosea, God is spending every effort to reach man’s ears, but they did not want to hear. The laborers that God needs so desperately today all over the world is not great orators, not men of eloquence, not necessarily highly learned men. God is going about seeking someone who will lend God his or her ear. That may not sound like much, but it is the urgent need.
In Samuel, God found a young man, a boy who said, “Speak Lord, for Your servant hears.” Samuel said, “I will listen.” God today would say, “Who is going to listen?” When we pray that God will send forth laborers, He needs laborers who will give Him their ear - not necessarily theologians. God has more theologians than He knows what to do with. But He has few who will say, “Speak Lord, for Your servant hears, anything You say Lord, for Your servant hears.”
Notice the term servant. This implies submission. It implies willingness to do what the servant hears. “Speak Lord, I am here to serve You. You speak and I will tell them what You speak. I will listen,” and God spoke. God shared with this little boy Samuel a secret. Do you know God shares secrets? “He reveals His secrets to his servants the prophets.”
I think it’s Psalm 24, “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.” In Samuel’s case, God shared with this boy Samuel a secret of what He was going to do with this backslidden priest Eli.
“Pray ye that God will send forth laborers,” the right kind of laborers, men and women who will give God their ear. We are told in Samuel that God spoke into the ear of Samuel, “Tomorrow about this time, I will send you a man. You are to anoint him king over my people.” Think of it! God spoke into the ear of Samuel, “Tomorrow I will send you a man.” God wants our ear.
These kind of laborers need to be laborers who give God their ear.
In Lamentations 2:9, it says something like, Her prophets also find no vision from the Lord. This is a complaint here. Israel’s prophets were so interested in things in which God had no interest, just like the church today. The church today is interested in many things in which God has no interest at all. Of these prophets it is said, “They found no vision from the Lord.” In other words, they could not get a message. They even were seeking a message, but could not find one. They had not given God their ears.
When the ministry ceases to get a real message from God, they turn to sermons. They go to the library, and nothing against the library. Then they go here and there to pick something up and put it together. If it lacks the anointing, they make a big noise about it, but that is not a vision. A vision is basically a message, a revelation, a communication from God to be passed on to God’s people at the time God wants it to be passed on.
That is the kind of laborers that are needed, not photographers. Why do you say photographers? It’s because they are running all over the world with half a dozen cameras and do very little preaching, or effective preaching. That is right.
Remember I said to you earlier from Samuel, “The Lord sought him a man after his own heart.” Do you know that is pathetic? It does not say, The Lord appointed him a man after his own heart, although He did that. But it says, “The Lord sought him.” Why is the word sought used? Obviously the kind of a man God needed is so hard to find.
You have the same in John with true worshippers. “They that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth, for the Lord seeks such.” What is God seeking worshipers for, real worshippers who worship him in spirit and in truth? This is because they are hard to find. Can you picture God looking around among men seeing thousands of men in Israel and looking them over?
God is still seeking, seeking for the right kind of men and women, instruments through whom He can convey His message. The church is asked to pray that God will undertake for this need and send forth laborers. In Psalm 14:2, we find a seeking God:
“The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God.” Psalm 14:2
Understand what? God is looking down from heaven to see if anybody would understand the desire of the heart of God for men to seek Him. Look at the seeking God in Ezekiel:
“And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me in the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none.” Ezekiel 22:30
I feel sorry for God going around seeking somebody that He needs. “I sought for a man among them, that should stand in the gap, but I found none.” God seeking a man to stand in the gap, but cannot find one. I do not know how long I will continue to travel. I keep going as long as I can. But there will be a day when I have gotten my last passport, my last visa and my last ticket for my last trip. Who is going to take my place? Who is going to stand in the gap? All of us is going to leave a gap. I will leave a gap someday.
God looks around to find somebody to stand in other people’s places like the torch the Greeks used in their races. A man will run as fast as he can carrying the torch. He has to reach a certain point. He arrives there out of breath and exhausted, ready to drop, and he hands the torch to somebody else. That somebody else takes the torch and keeps running and running. At a given point another man is waiting for him. Out of breath and ready to drop, he’ll hand that torch to the other man, and the man takes off. God is looking for men to take other men’s places.
We need to pray.
“And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.” Isaiah 59:16
God is looking for intercessors. This ministry is open to all of us. I was on a flight from Nice, France to Rome, Italy one very early morning in miserable weather. I got a spirit of intercession on that early morning flight. We were over the clouds and I was waiting for the sun to come up because that is quite a sight. That can be a riot of red as far as the eye can see. I got a spirit of intercession and said, “Lord, why is it that I have to spend so much time in intercession while traveling?”
And the Lord answered me and said, “Because there are so few to share the burdens.”
Apparently because there are so few willing to give themselves to intercessory prayer, God has to take the burdens and put more of them on the few because the many cannot be bothered. God’s kingdom needs intercessors in the Holy Ghost. He wondered why there was no intercessor.
“I looked, and there was none to help; and I wondered that there was none to uphold.” Isaiah 63:5
God is looking for somebody to help in the interests of His kingdom, to uphold the work of God by whatever means or methods. An individual can do that.
Lastly in Isaiah, God raises a question:
“Whom shall I send, and who will go for us.” Isaiah 6:8
The Lord gave me some insight into this some time back. This is the Godhead engaged in a committee meeting. They were discussing the need of finding a man for the work that needed to be done. Apparently They had a problem, for One of Them said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us.”
I can picture Him shrugging His shoulder and saying, “Whom shall I send? Who is there who will go for us?” In other words, who will go in Our interest, who will perform Our will, who will build up Our kingdom, who will seek to perform Our pleasure? That was the problem. The secret lies in the OUR. Who will go for us, rather than for themselves?
Isaiah was allowed to overhear the divine dilemma, as you know. Isaiah stood there and personally I think he must have raised his hand when he overheard God’s problem and said,
“Here am I, send me.”
So we are dealing with the matter of laborers. “Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest that he will send forth laborers into the harvest field.” Any takers this morning? Anyone who will give their ear to God? Any who will say, “Here am I, Lord. I will go in Your interests?”
God is seeking true laborers to go into His harvest field, to do His work His way.
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Walter Beuttler (1904 - 1974)
Walter H. Beuttler was born in Germany in 1904. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1925. In 1931 he graduated from Central Bible Institute. He served on the faculty atWalter H. Beuttler was born in Germany in 1904. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1925. In 1931 he graduated from Central Bible Institute. He served on the faculty at Eastern Bible Institute from 1939-1972. During a campus revival in 1951, God called Beuttler to “go teach all nations,” and for 22 years he travelled around the world ministering the word of God. He retired in Shaverton, PA with his wife Elizabeth. There he continued his ministry until he went to be with the Lord in 1974."Spiritual hunger presupposes a spiritual capacity. Such hunger originates with God (John 6:44). This hunger is, in fact, God Himself hungering for Himself through our spirit on our behalf. It is the call of God for the truth for which we hunger and is at the same time a divine guarantee of its satisfaction when this hunger is not diverted into other channels and thereby destroyed. “Blessed are they that hunger—for they shall be filled.” The earnest seeker after the God of the Word as well as the word of God, can expect to find in these notes “treasures of darkness and hidden riches of secret places” (Isa. 45:3)."