THE HARVEST OF THE EARTH

John 4:35-38 – Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”

Sometimes the unthinkable happens. The planters are overtaken by the harvesters. Jesus may have had Amos’ prophecy in mind when He was describing this supernatural harvest. Amos 9:13 – “Behold, the days are coming,” says the LORD, “When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, And the treader of grapes him who sows seed; The mountains shall drip with sweet wine, And all the hills shall flow with it.” Amos was describing the harvest at the end of the age, Jesus was saying that this time had come. Today we live at the culmination of this age of world harvest that Jesus introduced. The nations of the world are being prepared for God’s final act of this age, the great final harvest of the nations of the world. William Barclay describes this in his comments on this passage.

“Jesus went on to show that the incredible had happened. The sower and the harvester could rejoice at the same time. Here was something no man might expect….There is something else hidden below the surface here. The Jews had their dreams of the golden age, the age to come, the age of God, when the world would be God’s world, when sin and sorrow would be done away with and God would reign supreme.”

This golden age is different from what Israel expected, it would be the gathering of the Gentiles that would make this promise a reality. I had no idea the implications of this passage when the Lord clearly spoke to me from this word when I returned to New Orleans to start my ministry in 1977. I sensed an undeniable directive from the Lord to give myself to this region, the greater metro of the New Orleans area. From the first days of my ministry in the city I saw the Lord win souls as a confirmation of this word. I can say my food for almost five decades has been seeing souls come to the Lord in New Orleans. As I write this blog we are preparing to celebrate 47 years of pastoring Victory Church as a result of this call, I am thoroughly blessed and humbled to be in this position. I think the best news is this though; the Lord has saved the best for last and something special lies ahead of all of us in this city of New Orleans.