The harvest truly is great
The gospel harvest
I. THE STATE OF THINGS WHICH OUR LORD DESCRIBES.
1. A plenteous harvest.
(1) A great number of souls.
(2) Great diversity in souls.
2. This vast and varied crop is ready for the sickle. This is proved--
(1) By the moral and spiritual necessities of the world. A genuine philanthropist wants no other demand upon his efforts than the misery of His fellow men; and a genuine Christian requires no other proof that men are ready for the gospel than the fact that they need it. Here lay one of the great mistakes of the Church of a former age. She did not think of sending the gospel, because men did not clamour for it.
(2) But if our duty be plain in the presence of silent and uncomplaining woe, how much more when misery is suppliant and clamorous at our feet I The world is now conscious of its maladies; and knows full well what can heal them.
3. The labourers are few. They toil on, willing rather to die than to abandon their work. One and another drops and dies, exclaiming, as did the immortal Waterhouse, “more missionaries! more missionaries!” and the very heathen repeat and prolong the cry!
II. THE INJUNCTION FOUNDED ON THE ABOVE DESCRIPTION.
1. To whom are our prayers to be addressed? To “ the Lord of the harvest.”
(1) He is the owner and proprietor of the harvest. They are bought with a price. The enemy had usurped possession of the great Creator’s claim.
(2) And must He not, therefore, take a deep, an unspeakable interest in them? Think you that He can be indifferent whether this harvest is reaped or not?
(3) And it is God’s absolute and inalienable right to choose and employ His labourers.
2. We are called, then, to pray that God would graciously exert His prerogative in the appointment of His own labourers to reap His own fields. What does this prayer imply?
(1) He exerts this prerogative, in part, by the inward operation of His Holy Spirit.
(2) We are to pray, not only that God would call and qualify, but also send out labourers into His harvest. And here we must bare regard to His mode of administration. He does for man what man cannot do for himself, but requires him to do all that is in his power. We cannot give the piety; and the intellectual and spiritual gifts; but it is our duty and privilege to furnish the means for sending the men whom God has raised up.
3. Does any one ask, Why, if God is the Lord of the harvest, having such exclusive prerogatives, and so deeply interested in the matter, He should be entreated to do that which it so nearly concerns His honour not to leave undone? We answer, Such sceptical inquiries become not the position of finite and mortal creatures. The objection would apply to all prayer for any blessing; and call in question the whole administration of heaven. (J. H. James.)
The abundance of the harvest, and the scarcity of the labourers
I. Let us first look at THE HARVEST. It is too vast to be taken within the verge of one short sermon. China, India, Burmah, and Japan, Africa, the West Indies, South America, Russian Tartary, Persia, and the islands of the South Sea--all this is too vast for our consideration at the present opportunity.
II. THE LABOURERS. “The labourers are few.” Let us consider--
III. THE SAVIOUR’S PLAN FOR INCREASING THE NUMBER OF THE LABOURERS.
1. We observe in the first place, that where persons offer this prayer in sincerity, they make a solemn acknowledgment that God must do all the work.
2. In the second place, when a minister and a congregation offer up this prayer and solemnly enter into its spirit, they mean that, when God raises up such men, they will furnish the means to convey them to the heathen, and support them when they get there.
3. In the third place, when young men utter this prayer, they mean that, if it is the will of God, they are ready to become labourers.
4. Observe, in the last place, that when Christian parents offer up this prayer, they express their willingness that their children should go. (R. Knill.)
Harvest ripeness
It is just to go and gather in Christ’s sheep that are scattered abroad all over the world. In the notion of a harvest we cannot rid ourselves of the idea of ripeness--and I shall take a twofold view of this. There are some of the Lord’s family, and it falls to my lot not unfrequently to meet with such in whom we cannot fail to discern the presence of life; their knowledge of themselves as sinners is manifest, their view of Christ as a Saviour is encouraging, and even their reliance upon Him--but there is a want of ripeness, there is a rawness, a greenness, a defectiveness, a youthfulness. The harvest is craning on, beloved; let us look to our ripeness, the ripeness of all our faculties, as exercised in the things of God, the ripeness of all the graces called into full exercise, so that faith shall no longer be like a grain of mustard seed, but like the ripe ear, waving and bending with its weight--so that love shall no longer be faint and glimmering, as if it were but a spark, but fanned to a flame, rising high, and soaring to its native source; so that humility shall no longer be a piece of mockery, something openly expressed but never felt, but that which debases the soul in its own esteem, and keeps it in the dust at the feet of Jesus; so that hope shall not be merely the hope of the hypocrite, but a sure and steadfast thing as the ripeness we speak of--“Entering into that within the veil.” Moreover, there is a ripeness in grace, and there is a ripeness in sin. The sickle is coming, beloved, and therefore examine which state of ripeness you are in. When God was about to destroy the seven nations of Canaan, and told Moses of His deferring it for a time, while the children of Israel travelled forty years in the wilderness, He gave this as the reason, that the iniquity of the Amorites was not quite full--their sin was not yet completely ripe. Moreover, I saw in some fields some fine heavy corn, which was sadly “laid,” as they call it, bent down to the ground, and not exposed to the sun, so that it will be a long time before it gets ripe. What a picture of a great number of real Christians! They are so earthbound, so fond of this world, so laid low in their grovelling desires after it, that they cannot be expected to get ripe very fast. That corn gets ripe the fastest that lifts its head the highest, and gets away from the ground and the weeds. Beloved, if you would be ripe Christians, I tell you that you must get it by being lifted above the world and its vanities, enjoying intimacy with God, fellowship with the Most High, aspiring to heaven, and enjoying communications from above. (J. Irons.)
The labourers and the field
Note here--
1. That God’s Church is a harvest field.
2. That the ministers of God are labourers in His harvest, under God, the Lord of the harvest.
3. That to God alone doth it belong to send forth labourers into His harvest, and none must thrust themselves in till God sends them forth.
4. That the number of faithful labourers is comparatively small and few.
5. That it is the Church’s duty to pray, and that earnestly and incessantly, to God the Lord of the harvest, to increase the number of faithful labourers, and to send forth more labourers into His harvest. (W. Burkitt.)
The husbandry of God
1. Great is the harvest.
2. Few are the labourers.
3. God alone can restore the just relation between harvest and labourers. (Van Oosterzee.)
God the Lord of the harvest
1. God determines the time of the harvest.
2. God appoints the labourers for the harvest.
3. God guards the success of the harvest.
4. God deserves the thank-offering of the harvest. (Van Oosterzee.)
The need of immediate workers
Captain Allen Gardiner, on the inhospitable coast of South America, where he slowly perished with hunger, in the hope of attracting the notice of some passing vessel, wrote on the cliff in large letters “DELAY NOT, WE ARE STARVING.” Years after, the words were seen; but it was too late, the bleached bones of the brave hero of the cross strewed the beach. Help had been delayed, and he had perished. The like cry of a dying world for the Bread of Life, ringing in the ears of the people of God who have enough and to spare, will surely not be much longer unheeded. A few have responded already, but what are these among so many? Oh that we would each one arise and do our utmost daily, expecting to see mighty results now! (J. C. Fullerton.)
A prayer for more labourers
Leonard Keyser, a friend and disciple of Luther, having been condemned by the bishop, had his head shaved, and being dressed in a smock-frock, was placed on horseback. As the executioners were cursing and swearing because they could not disentangle the ropes with which his limbs were to be tied, he said to them mildly, “Dear friends, your bonds are not necessary; my Lord Christ has already bound me.” When he drew near the stake, Keyser looked at the crowd and exclaimed, “Behold the harvest! O Master, send forth Thy labourers!” And then ascending the scaffold, he cried, “O Jesus, save me!” These were his last words. “What am I, a wordy preacher,” said Luther, when he received the news of his death, “in comparison with this great doer of the Word?” (J. H. M. D’Aubigne.)
Christ’s harvest and Christ’s reapers
I. CHRIST MEANT HIS SEVENTY DISCIPLES TO GO FORTH AND GATHER THAT WHICH HAD ALREADY GROWN AND RIPENED.
1. He saw a harvest of piety, for instance, waiting for Himself, and the proofs of His Messiahship.
2. I think He saw also another sort of harvest, or another element in that harvest--the moral element. There were many highly moral people living in the world who had become disgusted with religion and its priests.
II. THE CHARACTER OF THE HARVEST-MEN HE EMPLOYED. It is at once painful and disheartening to perceive that He did not select, either as individuals or as a class, the professed teachers of religion, He employed no class of men as such. He dealt only with persons and their individual consciences, and so acting, it is easy to discover the sort of people He could call and use as His harvest-men.
III. AS THESE WERE PEOPLE MORALLY AND SPIRITUALLY LIKE HIMSELF (TO SOME REAL EXTENT AT LEAST), HE WAS RESTRICTED GREATLY IN THE NUMBER OF GATHERERS, AS HE WAS RESTRICTED IN THE METHOD OF INGATHERING TO BE EMPLOYED.
IV. I REMARK UPON THE MODE IN WHICH THE HARVEST WAS TO BE GATHERED. HOW were the pious and the moral to be brought in? I might properly answer, on a principle of natural selection. They were to preach the gospel of Christ, and illustrate, enforce, and commend that gospel by the beauty and perfectness of their own holy lives. They would thus become witnesses for God, as He was a witness for God.
V. TAKE NOW THE PRACTICAL LESSON. Piety in you and me, who profess to be Christ’s real friends, is to attract whatever piety we come in contact with. There is plenty of unattached piety waiting to be attracted by you and me. The Lord sent out twelve, then seventy. That great world-clasping system we call Christianity had once so few supporters and missionaries.
Do you ask how many it wants now? I will tell you. It wants every man, woman, and child, into whose soul the grace of God has come, that every other life found in the vast field of human activity may be brought with a throb of love and a song of joy, s gathered ear all ripe and golden to the great Lord of the harvest of souls. (J. McDougall.)