THE JOY OF HARVEST
(Harvest Thanksgiving Sermon.)
Isaiah 9:3. They joy before Thee according to the joy in harvest, &c.
I. The joy of the natural harvest. Harvest was peculiarly interesting to the Jews. [902][903].[904] Two things render “the joy of harvest” peculiar and impressive:
1. It is the completion and reward of the anxiety and labours of the year it closes.
2. It furnishes the supply for our needs in the year to come.—We call upon you to rejoice before the Lord to-day (P. D. 1710–1712), and to associate your thanksgiving with the name of Christ (Hebrews 13:15). Let all outward gifts remind you of that unseen Mediator through whom they flow. Our gratitude should be deep and fervent; it should bear some proportion to the regret we should have felt if God had withheld the blessings in which we now rejoice, and had blighted the promise of the year. Yet now, when those temporal gifts abound, let us remember their inability to satisfy the needs of the soul. The satisfaction for these needs is to be found only in Christ. He who had more corn than his barns could hold, now wants a drop of water to cool his tongue.
[902] They had scarcely any foreign trade—none till Solomon’s time. Every family lived upon its own inheritance and upon the produce of its own land. Consequently if harvest failed, all failed. They expressed their joy by solemn offerings to the Lord. Not a field was reaped before the wave-sheaf was placed upon the altar; and when it had been waved there, amidst the loud thanksgiving of the people, before the Lord of the whole land, the messengers from the Temple carried the proclamation to the husbandmen in the field, “Put ye in the sickle and reap!”—Thodey.
II. The joy of the spiritual harvest. The vicissitudes of the religious life are often compared to those of the seasons (Psalms 126:5-6). The Christian husbandman has his anxieties, arising from the badness of the soil, the unfavourableness of the seasons, the delay of harvest, the fear of final loss. Yet he has his reaping seasons of joy even in this world—
1. When a consciousness of sin which has long oppressed the soul is exchanged for a sense of pardoning mercy, through the application of the blood of sprinkling.
2. When, after a long period of depression, hope revisits the mind (H. E. I. 313, 314, 1658, 1659, 3041).
3. When there come to us the answers to our prayers that were long delayed (H. E. I. 3895, 3896). “Hope deferred maketh the heart sick; but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life.”
4. When the spiritual triumphs of the gospel are made manifest: to parents in their families; to ministers in their congregations; to missionaries abroad. Just in proportion to the toil and the prolonged anxiety is the rapture of success. The harvest sometimes comes to us after long delay, after many anxieties, after many fears (James 5:7-8). God sees fit to exercise His people with the discipline of suspense, but this is for their good (Lamentations 3:26).
III. The joy of the eternal harvest. When all Christ’s people are gathered into His immediate presence (Matthew 13:39); then will the declaration of our text be fulfilled in the highest sense of which it is capable. The ransomed will rejoice when they think,
1. Of the grace that reigns in their salvation. By that grace they were transformed from being tares, the end of which is burning, into wheat meet for the garner.
2. Of the great cost and care bestowed upon their culture, that they might be ripened for the heavenly kingdom.
3. How often they despaired of their own safety.
4. Of their deliverance from the fearful fate of the tares and chaff, whose end is to be burned.
—Samuel Thodey.