Luke 10:2

‘And he said to them, “The harvest indeed is plenteous, but the labourers are few, pray you therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he send forth labourers into his harvest.” '

This is the kind of statement that we might well expect Jesus to continually repeat, especially if He saw it as a kind of commissioning. This latter is easily possible for it occurs at the appointment of the twelve (see Matthew 9:37), and now at the appointment here, and is very suitable for a commissioning which has in mind continual expansion. They are not to see their appointment as just for this mission but as permanent and lasting, and as committing them in the long term. It gave them a vision of what would be. They are to see their own going forth as but a prelude to others going forth in larger numbers, something for which they had to pray.

He is thus here urging them to pray for the sending forth of more labourers, to follow up their own work. In a sense it is an amplifying and making practical of the prayer ‘May your Kingly Rule come' (Luke 11:2) describing how it is to come by many evangelists going out in the name of Jesus. Matthew has it in an earlier context (Matthew 9:37) at the time of the call of the twelve. But it was probably the constant burden on Jesus' heart, repeated whenever men were commissioned to go out (there were probably a number of these evangelistic forays). He was seeking continually to pass on the urgency of its message to His disciples. He wanted them constantly to recognise that there was an abundant harvest waiting to be gathered in, but that there was a shortage of labourers (compare John 4:35). And this shortage was so, for He was constantly seeking to recruit more (Luke 9:57). But He would only do so if they came up to His standards. In the end it was left in His Father's hands. It is the first instance we have which indicates that He longed for more evangelists.

He had previously urged this prayer on the early disciples (Matthew 9:37) and it had been answered to the extent that there were now seventy. So now He urges the seventy to pray for a further extension in their numbers. They too are to ask ‘the Lord of the harvest' to send forth more labourers into His harvest. There were so many to be reached and so few to reach them, and He was conscious that the time was short. It was also another way of impressing on them the importance of their task, and the speed that was necessary in its accomplishment.

The reference to the final harvest confirms that He sees these as ‘the last days'. That was when the final harvest was to be gathered in (Isaiah 27:12; Joel 3:13 LXX; Amos 9:13; Hosea 10:12; Matthew 3:10; Luke 3:9; Luke 3:16; Luke 10:9). The theme of spiritual fruitfulness and harvest is a common one in Scripture.