2.01.03. The fields white already to harvest
III. THE FIELDS WHITE ALREADY TO HARVEST.
“Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” — John 4:35.
HE conception here is closely allied to the subject of our last paper. The two parables are reciprocally complements of each other; together they constitute one whole. The second fills up the spaces that were left open in the first; consequently it is convenient and useful to examine them in immediate succession.
Never man spake like this man, because never man was like this man; his lessons, both in substance and in form, sprang naturally and necessarily from his life. The twofold nature of the Mediator was continually revealing itself in his words and his ways. The life of Jesus, as it lies in the evangelic histories, is a riddle which men cannot read until they find the key in his name, Emmanuel, and his nature, God with us. It is a life within a life; at every turn in his history the divinity glances from human words and acts, as a burning light shines through a transparent covering. In many instances the language which the Lord employed partook of his own twofold nature; and this peculiarity served to deposit his doctrines in the memory of his disciples, without revealing their full meaning until his work was finished. In these cases, while the body of the words represented temporal things, their soul within was occupied with things unseen and eternal. The passage in John 2:19-21 aifords an example of the peculiar duality of meaning which often attached to the words of the Lord, “ Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.”
It was his manner, while conversing about common things, to be occupied in secret with his own saving work, and to employ the terms as a channel to convey some law of the kingdom or some purpose of the King. Several examples occur in the narrative where this parable is found embedded. While he continued to speak to the Samaritan woman about the natural water which she had drawn from Jacob’s well, he employed the words as a vessel wherewith to pour the good news from a far country into a thirsty soul. While at a subsequent stage the subject in hand between himself and the disciples was the food which nature greatly needed, he was speaking of his own redemption work as the savoury meat which his soul loveth. And yet once more, while the senses of the disciples are occupied with the sown field and the expected harvest, the Master’s meaning is, Souls are perishing; haste to the rescue.
It was seed-time in Samaria when these events occurred and these words were spoken. The period is determined, directly by the terms of the text, and indirectly by the circumstances of the context. It is obviously implied that any one who should look simply to the course of nature would have said at that time and place, Four months hence it will be harvest. Further: from the abundant reference to sowing in relation to reaping which occurs in the succeeding verses, we may gather that on the journey northward that morning they had seen the husbandmen on either side of the path busily employed in the process of committing the seed to the ploughed ground.
Every reader of the evangelic history is aware that the Lord Jesus, looking on creation and redemption from the centre of the eternal purpose in which both were planned, was wont to think and speak of them in parallel lines.
None could so well cause the two worlds to throw light reciprocally on each other as the Author and Finisher of both. The Lord saw and acknowledged a many-sided and various analogy between nature and grace. At another time and place the operations of seed-time, as seen on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, suggested to him the parable of the sower; while on this occasion the same scene brings up a completely different lesson. There the sowing suggested the many obstacles which might interfere to prevent the growth and ripening of the grain; here it suggests the vastness of the harvest, the rapidity with which it ripens, and the consequent necessity of having many reapers ready to pour into the field. In the ministry of Jesus, two or more distinct and separate spiritual lessons spring from the same natural fact, as two or more wheat stalks spring from one grain of seed.
It is a remarkable and most instructive feature of this brief parable that it points out both a likeness and an unlikeness between the natural and the spiritual husbandry. In general, the sowing of the seed in spring and the reaping of the grain in harvest are like the preaching of the word and the gathering of saved souls; but in one particular feature they are decisively and conspicuously unlike. The points of similarity are many and obvious; the one point of dissimilarity, singled out in the instructions of the Lord, is, that whereas in the natural husbandry four months must intervene between the sowing and the reaping, in the spiritual husbandry, on the contrary, no such fixed and uniform period of time elapses after the gospel has been preached ere its ripened fruits are gathered in the conversion of sinners. In this department the ripe fruit may appear the same day — the same hour in which the seed of the word has been cast into a contrite heart; or it may lie dormant, not only four months, but forty years, and come in great abundance at last. On this distinction let the form and order of our exposition turn. Notice first the Likeness and then the Unlikeness which the Lord here acknowledges and employs between the natural and the spiritual husbandry, especially in the relation between sowing and reaping.
I. The natural sowing and reaping suggest, represent, and illustrate the sowing and the reaping in the kingdom of grace. The beginning of a process suggests the end. In the spring-time, as you walk along the highway, you may observe either the actual operation of sowing, or careful preparation for it, on almost every field. The first coming of Christ was the seed-time, and his second coming will be the harvest. From the seed which was then dropped into the ground will spring ripened fruit, like the stars of heaven or the sand of the sea-shore for multitude. The ten thousand times ten thousand that stand round the throne in white clothing constitute the harvest, waving like Lebanon, — a manifold increase from the handful of seed sown on the mountains of Israel, when the Son of God took our nature and gave himself for sin.
Generally, the seed is the word, and the sowers are the ministers of the gospel. Wherever and whenever Christ is preached, there is a sowing of the precious seed. But in all cases the sowing is only a means to an end It is the hope of harvest that induces the husbandman to cast his seed into the ground, and sustains Um through the heavy labour of the spring. If he did not desire to reap, he would not sow; and if he did not expect to reap, he could not. No mail ever yet cast the material seed into the ground for the sake of the sowing. He would be counted mad who should go forth ostentatiously and laboriously to sow seed in the field, performing the operation with a knowing and elegant air, counting his work done when the grain was lost to view under the clods, and never coming back to look for a profitable return. Every man that sows, sows in order to have an increase in harvest.
Those who have their bosom filled with the incorruptible seed of the word should do likewise. When we have preached, even when we have preached well, our work is not done, our end is not attained. He is wise that winneth souls. It is enough to console a man for all the pain of spring, when he went forth weeping, bearing precious seed, to tell him that he will return rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with biro. This is the only aim that will animate a ministry as a living soul and sustain a minister as a commanding motive, — to save a soul from death and hide a multitude of sins. When many anxious inquirers come to a minister, and many under his advice close with Christ as their righteousness, the joy is like the joy of harvest. Though in harvest the work is heaviest, it is then that the workers are most cheerful. There is a providential arrangement here; and the rule holds good in both husbandries.
II. Consider now the single feature in which there is a marked dissimilarity between the natural and the spiritual husbandry. Whereas in nature a known and uniform period, in each country and climate, intervenes between the sowing and the reaping, in grace the fruits may be gathered at any season of the year, and at any length of time, from the least to the greatest, after the seed of the word has been sown. In this respect the word of the Lord intimates that there is a specific contrast between the two departments.
He put the question to the disciples as an emphatic method of affirming that they were accustomed to say. We shall have harvest in four months. It would have been an inversion of the order of nature if the fields had been ripe on the day that they were sown or the day after. Yet he announces emphatically that the fields were already white to harvest. Lift up your eyes and see. Alas I they were not adept in the art of lifting up their eyes or their souls.
It was downward and earthward that they ordinarily looked. It needed an elevation of position and an enlightenment of eye to enable them to understand that in the labour to which they had been called they might reap as soon as they had sowed.
Two lessons, distinct but cognate, emerge here, one on either side. The interval between the sowing and the reaping is not the same in the kingdom of grace as it is in the kingdom of nature: —
1. It may be shorter.
2. It may be longer. On the one hand it is not necessary for sowers of the word to wait four months ere they begin to look for a return; and, on the other hand, although they have waited four months, or as many years, without seeing a single ripened stalk, they should not despair of success or abandon the enterprise.
1. Do not wait four months, for the harvest may come at an earlier period. The seed that is sown to-day may be ripe to-night. An example of such a rapid progress to maturity was set before the disciples that day beside Jacob’s well. Jesus has dropped the seed into that poor woman’s heart. See the great, plump fragrant seeds as they drop from the Sower’s hand: “ Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14). She had gone away into the town and invited her neighbours. In the interval of her absence the conversation took place between the Lord and his disciples in which he told them that though the cultivators in the neighbourhood must wait four months after having deposited the seed in the ground ere they could expect to reap their harvest, it was not so in the kingdom of God. They might sow to-day and to-morrow reap abundantly. Peter, when at Pentecost he saw the heads of the surrounding multitude drooping on their breasts under his preaching, like ripe ears of grain under an autumn sun, would doubtless remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, on the very day of the sowing, The fields are white already to the harvest.
“ Lift up your eyes,” he said, perhaps not an hour after the sowing, “ and look on the fields... they are white already.” At this point he glides from the natural to the spiritual. Those who were on the spot would observe the transition easily; for in point of fact the agricultural fields in view were not white. They were black, as being newly ploughed and sown. But I think it probable that a stream of people from Sychar, stirred by the tidings which the woman bore, were by this time pouring along the road towards the well where the Messiah stood, and that these were the whitened fields on which the Master would send his servants to work. To the left, when they lifted up their eyes, they would see an enclosure of dull black earth, for which, although the seed was already in its bosom, the owner must wait four months ere he could get any ripe return; but to the right, although the seed was only sown that day at noon, already the harvest of anxious souls was waving like Lebanon, inviting the reaper to enter and fill his bosom with the sheaves.
Those who minister the word of Christ, whether more publicly or more privately, are at once sowers and reapers.
Like the cultivators in the natural sphere, the same persons must sow the seed and gather in the harvest; but unlike the cultivators of the ground, those who care for souls may and should expect to reap immediately after they have cast away the seed. Here then is the lesson for the reapers whom this Master sends into his field. Never fold your hands and say we must wait — the fruit cannot appear till such and such an interval. Go out to gather, expecting to get your bosom full; lest while you are waiting the harvest whiten suddenly, and soon waste for want of reapers. The Master gives sometimes to the sowers a glad reaping in the spring, but not uniformly, not always.
2, The second branch of the lesson is, — Do not despond and count your labour lost, although four months, although four — forty years pass and the seed which you have been all the time sowing should lie still hidden in the ground. If the cultivator of the grain field do not see his harvest whitening in about four months, he abandons hope: he knows that if he do not get a harvest from the spring’s sowing now, he will get it never. In the spiritual husbandry, where ministers are fellow-workers with God in the saving of the lost, this rule does not hold good. As the seed of the word may ripen earlier, so also it may ripen later, than other seed.
It is well worthy of remark here that although these peculiarities are contrary to each other, the Lord of the harvest makes them both alike work for good to his servants in their toil. To know that some of the seed ripens early, keeps their hopes active from the first; and to know that some of the seed ripens late, prevents their hopes from sinking even to the last.
One most precious aspect of the law that the spiritual seed may bring forth fruit after it has long lain dormant, is specially singled out by the Lord in a subsequent part of the same conversation, where he intimates to the disciples that “one soweth and another reapeth.” How broad and deep is the counsel of God in this feature of his covenant. It is fitted to multiply the labourers and intensify their toil. To draw forth the reapers, and give them an impulse in their work, it is proclaimed that seed sown long ago by some who have entered into rest may be now growing white for the sickle; and that consequently those who now enter the service may enjoy the delight and the reward of reaping where they have not sown. On the other hand, where there is faith in God, a patient sower is greatly comforted by learning that the living seed is not lost, although his own eyes should not behold the golden sheen of harvest. Even when these eyes are closing in death, the servant of the Lord who has been faithful in his day may depart in the joyful hope that many sons shall be brought into glory as the fruit of his saving work.
Both are best, and God has shown his goodness in giving both. We could not hold on, unless some of the seed should ripen in our own sight and be gathered by our own hands; and we should abandon the work in despair, unless we were held up, on the other side, by the knowledge that after many days the seed sown now may send up a plentiful harvest. In times of special spiritual quickening, beautiful mixtures of both methods occur. Some of the seed sown long before by other labourers ripens suddenly then, and is gathered on the same day with fruit that springs from the sowing of yesterday.
Men are the reapers in this harvest: there is no limit as to the capacity that each shall possess or the numbers that may be employed. As to numbers, the rule is, “ Let him that heareth, say, Come.” Every one who knows that Christ is precious should make his secret known to his neighbour; and as to capacity, the Master has need of men — little ones who have one talent, as well as of the great who have ten. These are the reapers in this harvest; but another harvest follows that will be gathered by another class of labourers. Time is the spring season, death is the sowing, resurrection is the harvest, and the reapers are the angels. When the earth and the sea give up their dead, the fields will be white to harvest, and a mighty band of reapers will have their hands full of work.
Some rocky islets are so covered at certain times by white sea-birds, that they seem from a distance islands of snow. When an alarm is sounded the whole multitude rise into the air, like a cloud that hides the sunlight from the landscape. This black earth sailing through space, protruding like a rugged islet from the waters of infinitude, will, methinks, appear one day white like a hill of snow. When the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall rise, oh, what a harvest! These angel reapers will quickly fill their bosoms with the sheaves. Christ died and rose again, the first-fruits; then shall all that are his arise to meet him, the full harvest of the ransomed that shall at last fully satisfy his soul.