New Thoughts (3/7/07-3/14/07)
The question of evil is a question that has plagued the mind of man for as long as we have record of man’s thoughts. It is the question that is explored in the book of Job. It is a question that many authors have sought to answer at length. One of the first things that struck me about this parable is that it is the official answer of God to the question of evil. Notice that those laborers come to Him asking what’s up. “If you sow only good seed, where are these weeds coming from?” This is nothing but the question, “If You are Good, and Creator of all, then how can there be evil in Your creation?” The answer is direct and to the point. “An enemy has done this.” Of course, that leads to the follow on question of why He allows evil to persist. It is this aspect of the problem of evil that the parable seeks to address.
Many have looked at this as a teaching on Church discipline and management. Many have, with that thought in mind, decided that the parable must not be entirely authentic, because there was not yet a Church to manage. However, as I believe I have shown, there is no reason to look upon the parable in such a light. Indeed, the fact that is used to discredit the validity of the text should really have invalidated the interpretation. Obviously, it’s not about Church management, so if that’s what we understand from it, we must be missing the point. The point is in the questions those servants asked. “How can this be, and what should be done?”
God is not the source of evil. Neither does His tolerance of it in His creation amount to condoning evil. His answer is quite simple. All that He has sown is indeed good. The evil has not come by His efforts. It is suffered to remain because what would be required to destroy evil from the land would, at this stage, be destructive to the good as well as the evil. Let it wait. The weeds of evil are not such as will choke out the good crop. They do not seek to choke, but to infiltrate. They seek to hide amidst the good and poison its produce. But, by their fruits they will be known, and in the end, He Who knows the heart and fruit of the man will see to it that only the good are preserved.
Along the same lines as this thought, I found the first verse of this passage translated as “The kingdom of the heavens has become like” in the Darby translation. This has a much different significance to me than simply saying it can “be compared to”. A little bit of investigation this morning indicates that the underlying word is homoioo which, as noted above, can mean either to compare to or to become similar to. Both translations are on solid ground thus far, then. Looking further, I learn that the particulars of the usage of homoioo in this place, it is in the indicative mood, which in this case can be taken as simply declaring a fact. It is in the passive voice (and to me, this seems key), indicating that the subject receives the action of the verb. Finally, it is in the aorist tense, which can either look upon the event described as a whole, or as something which has already transpired.
Considering the voice, if I take the meaning of homoioo as ‘to compare to’, I do not see how the subject (the kingdom) can receive that comparison. If, on the other hand, I take the meaning as ‘to become like’, that possibility of having received the result makes sense. Then, given the issue of the aorist tense, whether we should see this as a past action or a whole action, that would be hard to say. The nature of the story provided would support either case, I suppose. There is one thing, though, that argues in favor of past action rather than whole action: The seeds sown by the enemy were not there from the outset. It may not have been long after the beginning, as we measure things, but it was not at the beginning. For those tares to have been sown from the very start, this enemy would have had to have been working right alongside the good God, and how would He have tolerated that? Notice the flow of the story: While men were sleeping, the enemy came. The tares were sown after the good seed, not simultaneously.
With this in mind, it seems all the more clear that the parable is designed to answer the issue of evil. The kingdom of heaven was not originally designed with this evil included. While it was accounted for in God’s planning, it was not the intent of His planning. God started with a creation wholly good as He is wholly good. For reasons known only to Him (and this reason is not addressed by the parable), He created even the angels with a free will, and some of those angels He created, of their own free will, chose to rise above their station. One in particular became so jealous of God that he sought by every means he could to discredit and displace God and put himself in that ultimate position. It is this enemy who has sown the seeds of evil that so trouble us in our day. It is he who has sought at every opportunity to spoil the perfection of creation. Notice that: The kingdom of heaven has become like this. It was not always so.
It will not always remain so. For many millennia it has been this way, the good and the evil mixed together and coexisting one with the other. For many millennia it has been the case that good and evil are not always distinguishable. It is not just the Church that suffers from this. Think about it. How often do we read interviews with those who knew the perpetrator of some particularly heinous crime, and find them saying things like, “He was such a nice man. We would never have suspected such a thing of him.” It is only when the fruit of their real condition is made plain to see that their true nature is known. Is this not why God reminds us constantly that our judgment is impaired by our inability to discern the inward condition? To our eyes wheat and tare look the same – at least until the fruit shows itself. For most, that day doesn’t come until we go to our final rest. That is particularly true, I suspect, of the good fruit. We may have put a good face on things. We may have kept up appearances, but when we are gone and we can no longer keep control of what is revealed about us what do the things and the people we have left behind testify of who we really were? Is there a universal acknowledgment that we were what we seemed? Is there a consistent picture of the man we thought we knew? Or, are there going to be those left shaking their heads, saying, “who would have suspected?”
Indeed, many who know our past might find it unbelievable to think that we are who we claim to be now. Is this not at least a partial reason for the prophet being less welcome in his homeland? They knew us when. It’s a difficult matter to reconcile that old man with this new man. Is he acting or is this real? The assumption will be that it is acting. Think about our standard response to changes of position amongst our political class. Our first suspicion is that the change isn’t real. It is only an attempt to capture more votes. We all suddenly find ourselves Missourians, demanding that these professors of change show us by their deeds that the change is real. Is it any wonder that skeptical unbelievers look at us in much the same light? And, if they are looking for such proof of a real conversion, what are they seeing? Inasmuch as we are showing fruit, is that fruit displaying the whiteness of true faith, or the blackness of poisonous deceit?
Most of us, reading about the presence of these tares or darnel, will understand little more than that there are weeds in the field. However, the use of this particular weed in the parable is no matter of chance. Darnel is a weed that would be particularly familiar to a region where wheat was grown, because it is nearly indistinguishable from wheat until it ripens. Notice that as Jesus tells His story, it isn’t until the wheat bore grain that the slaves noticed a problem. It’s insidious. Any other form of weed might have been noticed earlier. Any other form of weed could have been pulled out before it could really take root. But, this bearded darnel goes undetected until it has become so thoroughly intermixed with the good wheat that you couldn’t hope to uproot it without uprooting everything.
Typically, this parable tends to be viewed as describing the mixed nature of the church body. There are true believers and then there are those social Christians. The problem is that we are all but incapable of making an accurate distinction between the two. Well, certainly this can be said of the church at any time in its history. Of course, at the time Jesus spoke this parable the church had no history. The only reason this parable applies to the church is because the church is taken out of the world. The world outside the church is just as much a mixed bag as inside. The reality of the presence of evil in the world all but guarantees that there will be the presence of evil in the church that was taken out of the world. Wherever there is the reality of God’s manifest presence and power, you can be reasonably certain that this enemy who sows the tares will be along shortly to plant his imitation believers into the scene. It’s almost a given. And, like the tares of the parable, we are not likely to recognize which is the real and which the imitation until the damage has been done.
Returning to the nature of the darnel, the thing that gives it away in the end is the grain. Whereas Jesus looked out over the wheat fields and said, “see? The fields are white for harvest!”, the grains of the darnel are black. One reflects the purity of heaven, the other the fatal poison of sin. Fausset’s Encyclopedia provides a few other interesting points about this weed. Should the grains of the darnel get into the flour alongside the wheat, things made of that wheat might cause dizziness, intoxication or even paralysis. The ISBE notes that bearded darnel is particularly susceptible to the mold known as ergot. Ergot, if memory serves, is the substance that led to the discovery of LSD. It’s no wonder, then, that dizziness and intoxication would follow the eating of this sinful flour! Isn’t it interesting, Fausset’s indicates that only this one plant amongst all the grasses has this deleterious effect on man! It’s reminiscent of the Garden. Of all the plants and fruits you may eat, except that one…
Bring all this information back into the picture painted by this parable, for all of this information would have been common knowledge amongst those who heard it. Every child of a farmer would have known what it meant to go out and inspect the grains before the harvest, to ensure that none of that darnel was included. Many would have suffered the results of a poorly inspected harvest. Most of them would understand just how insidious and difficult an issue that darnel presented to the farmer. Jesus is building on that common knowledge to answer an age-old question. Why is there evil? If God is good, how can things be such as they are? Well, He says, the seed God sowed in creation was indeed good seed, for what planter would knowingly do otherwise in his fields? No, it was an enemy that did the planting, and God is not unaware of the problem. However, like any wise farmer, He knows what damage will be done trying to destroy those weeds during the season of growth. It will wait for the harvest, when everything is going to be uprooted anyway, and the fruit will make identification certain.
Isn’t that interesting? The presence of evil in this world is not some sick bent of God’s humor. It’s not some oversight on His part. It’s not proof that He isn’t good. It is simply the measure of His mercy, and His care for His own. Yes, it’s uncomfortable for us having this evil alongside of us. But how much worse for us to be uprooted in the process of trying to destroy that evil? Consider the modern outcry against the death penalty. Is the issue that the punishment doesn’t befit the crime? Not really. Every opposition to that penalty is focused on the fact (and it is a fact) that we might impose it by accident. Our judgment of the case may not be as accurate as it should be. The judge may have been ever so impartial and yet have been wrong. This is something God was aware of when He instituted the death penalty. He knows His children are fallible. He knows that however earnestly they seek righteous justice, they are prone to making mistakes, to being deceived. So, He put safeguards into His process, even as we do today. Does that ensure that there will never be an error? Of course not. One can no more ensure an error free system of justice than one can legislate an accident free childhood, although we seem determined to try our utmost to reach both ends. It simply is not in us as imperfect beings to reach perfection in much of anything.
Our best approach is to recognize our own limits instead of exalting ourselves as the ultimate answer. Humanism has allowed and encouraged this foolish assessment of the race. It is, however, nothing but the effect of the darnel on the flour. Those who partake of that flour become dizzy, delusional. They begin to see things that aren’t really there. What reality appears like in their eyes is not real. Things seem so much more clear to their way of thinking, but all that clarity is but a deception. They have swallowed the poison, and the poison is running its course. What’s worse, they have discovered they rather enjoy that dizzy, delusional state. The world is much more entertaining under the influence than sober. Perhaps they should share it with their friends… Pretty soon, we have the entire world wandering about under the influence of this false view of mankind. Is it any wonder that we begin to see such nonsensical movements and causes promoted?
The church is not immune to this. It suffers from the presence of this dangerous, intoxicating seed as well. Entire denominations go wandering off after vain imaginations. Movements spring up in the name of Jesus that Jesus would never condone. In our day, it seems every crank idea, every fad, every opinion finds a way to attach itself to Jesus’ name as a way of validating itself. Black seeds, every one! Why does He tolerate it? Again, the answer is “Mercy”. His mercy extends to His own, knowing the damage that might be done in trying to rip this vileness out just now. Further, His own know Him. They are not being played by this game. Though they are side by side with this poisonous crop of unbelief, their own seed continues to grow in purity, because it comes from pure seed. The evil may make for more work for the harvesters, but the wheat cannot be made darnel by the presence of darnel. The wheat remains wheat.
Public opinion may be troubled by this development. The Church may have its image problems from time to time, but the real Church, the body within the body, remains. While there may be bread that has been poisoned by this seed of iniquity, there is still real bread to be had. That real bread will still bring life to those that partake. The One who sows those seeds of righteousness is still assured of a great harvest, and He has promised not only seed for sowing, but bread for eating. Praise be to His name!
With that, let me turn my thoughts to the season of the harvest. Jesus turns our eyes to the time of the harvest, and in so doing, He makes clear that the time of the harvest is a time when the harvest is mandated. It is the kairos moment, a time which demands its purpose be fulfilled. When God says “It’s time”, there is no possibility of further delay. It is not a matter of Him allowing or providing the time necessary for that task, although He does. It is that the time has come when action is demanded. Wuest’s translation speaks of this as a strategic season. This is not unreasonable. We are, after all, discussing a harvest and it is a harvest which God has sown Himself. He is not likely to demand the harvesting be done before things are ready, nor is He likely to leave His crop in the ground so long that it dies out before He can gather it in. He appoints that moment with perfect timing. He divinely appoints a time beyond which there can be no change of status. He has cried out over and over again with warnings. He has called to man over and over again only to have His call fall on deaf ears. He has done everything to wake up His children. There must come a time when all these efforts cease and the weeds of evil are once for all ripped up and destroyed. Divine Justice demands such a time. Divine Mercy has held it off until it could be accomplished without loss.
The timing of this moment of crisis for mankind is God’s. The harvesters who come in that moment, as Jesus will explain, are the angels sent by God to complete the command of that moment. They come with His instructions and His judgments. It is His judgment and His alone that shall determine who is counted wheat in that harvest, and who is counted darnel. The hidden fruits of each life will be laid open to be seen. If the fruit is black, the harvesting angels know what to do. If the fruit is white, then may that life be brought to the storehouse of God with great rejoicing.
It is in that moment that judgment becomes final. It is, in that sense, a moment of crisis for each man. Many will have faced that day’s crisis before the day, though. Each one of us whom Jesus has brought out of the world has faced that moment. It came with the call of Christ. His call always echoes the demand of Joshua: Choose today. Are you with God or against Him? Even here, God appoints the time. We may flatter ourselves thinking we were off looking for Him when we found Him, but it is only that: flattering vanity. He appointed the time of our salvation, and He alone brought that salvation into being. He appointed the time of our crisis, and He appointed the result. Now that we are declared sons of God by His own choosing, we need to remain cognizant of the real nature of our conversion. We need to be constantly in mind that judgment is God’s job, especially when it comes to these others. The position of Judge has been reserved for Jesus the Christ. All authority has been given to Him, and that day of harvest belongs to the Lord of the Harvest. Our job, then, is not to go around trying to distinguish wheat from tare as we sit in church. Our job is not to seek out and destroy those weeds of hypocrisy and falsehood that may be around us. Our job is to do what we can to make sure we are not weeds ourselves. Our job is to do everything we can to cooperate with the Spirit Who is at work within us so that when that appointed our comes, we shall be found true sons of God, the fruit of our lives washed white by His righteousness.
Thinking further on this matter of the harvest day (for it seems that whenever Jesus speaks of the kingdom, He causes us to look with longing toward that day), it is worthwhile to look backward a bit, and see what history of thought Jesus was mining as He spoke. The harvest, of course, had long been a matter of importance to the people. It was, after all, a matter of life and death. It always is. One thing I find particularly instructional in regard to the harvest is the combined impact of what God commands through Moses, and what He imparts through Solomon. As God expounds the rules of life to His people through Moses, He explains that “Even during the harvest time you shall rest” (Ex 34:21). Yet, through the wisdom He gave to Solomon, we hear Him saying that the son who sleeps during the harvest is a shameful son (Pr 10:5). What are we to make of this? Well, the first thing I might point out is that rest and sleep are two different matters. When we sleep, we are completely and utterly unaware of what is going on around us. We have shut down for the day, and have no intention of getting up to do anything more. When we rest, we recognize it as being only a break. It is a momentary stop to regain strength and energy. Granted, one could view sleeping as an extended break, but that is not the way we see it portrayed in Scripture.
The one who sleeps is disengaged. He has no interest or concern for what is going on. He is, we might say, blissfully unaware. The time of harvest is a time when every able body is needed. If you grew up around a farming community, you understand this. There are seasons in which everyone’s attention is on the crop, because without everyone’s attention and effort, the crop will not support those who depend on it. One of the articles regarding the tares pointed out that women and children would be sent into the fields to inspect the fruit and eradicate the tares before the men came through to cut and gather the wheat. Everybody was involved as their abilities allowed. Shameful, indeed, the son who can’t be bothered to help. Here is the source of his very sustenance being gathered, but he doesn’t consider it a matter for his involvement.
Admittedly, this particular parable does not address the issue of sleeping workers. In fact, as Jesus later explains, the harvesters in this case will not be His disciples but rather His angels. This harvest is not a mission for man. Somewhere, it seems, we lost sight of that. Our involvement is in the sowing, the watering and the weeding that have led to there being a mature crop for those harvesters to come into. And, we are told that in that time the harvesters and the sowers will celebrate together. Imagine that! We’ll be celebrating with the angels.
But, let me return to this matter of resting during the harvest. It seems to me that this is instructive to the Church today. It’s as though God is reminding us not to get so caught up in our programs and events and efforts that we forget to come spend time with Him. However urgent the need, He says, don’t forget to stop and recharge. Don’t forget to come visit Me. Jesus is always seen drawing away from the action to go pray alone for a time. He is resting. The work around Him was so urgent it would have driven anybody else to despair to consider the enormity of the task. It was, by our measure, hopeless. He couldn’t possibly heal them all, save them all, in His frail humanity. The disciples needed so much training. How could He hope to get them up to speed in those three short years. So much to do. Yet, even the urgency of His brief mission did not dissuade Him from taking His rest with the Father. That time of intimate communion was paramount. It trumped every other need, however righteous.
Many I know of today are hearing this message. It’s time to draw back from all the programs and outreaches and services and every other thing by which the church consumes our time. At the end of the day, God has not called us to be servants of the Church but to be His servants. Oh, but the need is great, and we are just sure that if we don’t do it nobody else will. The Church needs us. Besides, here’s something tangible I can do to feel like I’m contributing to the kingdom. Nobody wants to find themselves accused of being so caught up in the things of heaven that they are neglecting their earthly duties. Nor should they. The point here is not to withdraw as completely as a monastic. We are not being told to utterly abandon world and Church. Not at all. But, we must have our time of rest. We must have our time alone with Dad. He desires our time far more than our service. Indeed, if we will spend that time, He will make our proper service clear to us.
The reason we lack for rest is because we lack for instructions. We have accepted whatever effort, whatever position, whatever busyness that any have laid upon us (or merely suggested to us), and we’ve gotten so caught up in doing that we forget to stop. We are not in danger of sleeping through the harvest unless we overreact when we come to our senses. Don’t abandon the fields! But, don’t get so caught up in laboring in those fields that you drop in your tracks. A dead servant is of little use to the Master.
There are some interesting events that one finds coupled to the days of harvest. Looking at them, it seems to me I have commented on them before. However, I shall not let that dissuade me from commenting on them again. The first of these events is an aside found in the book of Joshua, as the entry into the Promised Land is described. There, it is pointed out that throughout the season of harvest, the Jordan overflows its banks (Jos 3:15). Well, this is an interesting detail, certainly, but hardly one that needed to be told to a nation that dwelt in that very land. They would know this and that being the case, we have cause to think there must be another reason for including this bit of information. I think it is there for its spiritual implications. Is this, perhaps, another representation of that same river Ezekiel later saw flowing from the temple? Of course, the Jordan is a real river, and of course it’s behavior during the harvest season is a natural occurrence. Clearly then, it can find a scientific explanation. That’s not the point. It’s not about how it happens to be that way, it’s a little bit about why it happens to be that way. More, it’s about why God felt inclined to mention it here.
Throughout the harvest, which we see Jesus relate to the last days separation of the saved and the damned, this river overflows. That is the same river, we might note, in which John was baptizing. It is the same river in which the disciples of Jesus were baptizing. In a spiritual sense, I see this whole thing pointing to the nature of the New Covenant mission in the world. While the harvest represents that final judgment which belongs to Jesus alone, it is also representative of the work of the Church in the meantime. We are to sow. We are to water. We are to weed, within limits. We, too, have our harvest to attend to. It is not the final harvest, but it is the harvesting of those souls which Jesus has awakened to the salvation He affords. For such as these, He sends us out to bring in the fruits of His efforts, that they too may become friends and laborers in His fields. And all through this time the River is not just flowing, it’s overflowing.
What is that River? More properly, Who is that River? Jesus, talking to a forlorn woman in Samaria, declared to her that had she more sense, she would ask Him for a drink and receive living water (Jn 4:10). We understand, of course, that He is talking of Himself. Later, He would declare that any who was thirsty ought come to Him and drink, for the one who believes in Him shall find that rivers of living water flow from his innermost being (Jn 7:37-38). Throughout the season of harvest, it is like this. That living water which is the I AM is overflowing those who have believed, pouring out from their lives to impact the dry lands around them, and wherever that river flows, life springs up. For, it is living water.
There is another thing we ought to consider regarding the appointed time which is the harvest. It was in that time, while they were reaping the wheat harvest, that the Ark of the Covenant returned to the land (1Sa 6:13). Again, the narrative itself gains little benefit by noting this fact. Unless it gains by the very fact that the people of Israel would be aware of the state of the Jordan at such a time. For the Ark to re-enter the land, it had either to be brought across the flooded Jordan or through the arid Negev. Either would present a formidable obstacle to an unguided ox-cart, don’t you think? What oxen would willingly go into the dusty wilderness? What oxen would choose to wade into a river that was running strong and deep without the insistence of the drover to persuade them? The timing of this event makes God’s power and glory more evident in the simple fact of the Ark’s return. He could have brought the Ark back into Israel at any time He chose. He chose to do it in the least likely season, when the river was at its height!
Even with this explanation, though, I think we are too close to the natural explanation. There is spiritual meat to be had in understanding what God is declaring in this. First, I notice that the people were busy. Specifically, they were busy reaping the harvest. They were in tune with the timing of God’s plan. Had they been sowing in the season of harvest, they would accomplish little. Had they been harvesting in the season of sowing, they would have nothing to show. They are not setting their own agenda, they are laboring as one with God’s agenda.
They are not idlers. They are at work. They do not sit on their hands waiting for God to move. They are out doing their part. The river is overflowing and the people of God are out doing His bidding. Can there be a better situation for the kingdom? Notice this as well: It is specifically the wheat harvest that is in sight. Behold, the fields are white for harvest! Wheat was not the only crop to be had in Israel. If memory serves, it would be the last of the crops to be brought in. It is not the only crop for Israel, but it is the one crop that Scripture uses to represent the end of all days. Why is this? I’m not sure. I made note already of the whiteness of the wheat grain in that season of harvest. Perhaps this is not the case for barley, so that wheat alone stands out with that color of purity and righteousness. Aside from that, I know barley was considered as the lesser grain, the poor man’s grain. Wheat stood out as the most noble of grains, fit for kings. Here, too, although not representing our inherent worth, wheat can be seen to have characteristics that will describe our final estate: We, too, will have been found fit for the King.
Perhaps, then, it is not so much the crop as the activity that is most important, for Joel points to that time when the harvest of wickedness is fully ripened – ripe to overflowing (Joel 3:13). Well, link that back to the parable at hand. The tares and the wheat are growing together. The barley may have ripened earlier, but these two grains are more of a kind. They are so similar in appearance and habit as to be all but indistinguishable. So we might not be surprised to find that the harvest of wickedness is at its most abundant in the same day that the harvest of righteousness is. That is what made the tare such an insidious weed. But, in that day of harvest, Joel tells us, the LORD will come into the valley of decision (Joel 3:14). There, it is to be supposed, He will set the throne of judgment and His Son, the appointed Judge will take His seat upon it. This is the day of the harvesters, the day in which the angels are sent out to cull the tares from amongst the wheat. It is the day of decision. The moment of crisis for each man and woman in that valley will not be upon that day. The moment of crisis will have come at some earlier time, and the choice of each man and woman will have been made in that previous moment. What remains is not the crisis, but the denouement. It is the day of inevitable results. It is the day when all that was sown will reveal its true fruits and be taken to its appropriate destination: the fruits of righteousness will be brought into the house of the LORD, but the fruits of wickedness will be fuel for the fire.
While it is clear that the harvest is an end-time concern, it is also the very present concern of the believer. Jesus declared that those fields were ready for harvesting. The reaper, He said, was already earning his wages, gathering the fruits of that harvest unto eternal life (Jn 4:35-36). How shall we fit this with what has already been said, for Scripture is of a piece with itself? What I understand this to say is that the end-time harvest is not necessarily an instantaneous event. It is a season, just as the natural harvest is a season rather than one specific moment. The harvest time in the kingdom of heaven began, it would seem, with the arrival of God’s Christ on the scene. We cannot even set the beginning at His resurrection, for He said well before then that it was already ongoing. Thinking further, I suspect that we could consider the whole of history from Adam forward as the season of heavenly harvest, for there have always been those whom God has considered His own, even in the most fallen of times.
That said, the ministry of Jesus ushered in a new period of acceleration in the process. What had been little more than gleanings to date was about to bloom and bear fruit in a way not previously seen. What had dwindled to a mere remnant of the least of nations was about to burst onto the world scene and catch hold of more hearts and minds than could be found in that least of nations. What had been poor and despised would find itself exalted. Of course, with time, that process would have to reverse, for the exalted Church develops a pride and self-reliance unbefitting its proper office. So, the proud must once again be humbled. The vines must be dressed and trimmed, and much will fall away, but this is to provide greater increase still.
And through it all, that message of Jesus holds true: The fields are ready and being harvested. It’s a daily matter, for His coworkers have never ceased in sowing the Word, and where the Word takes root, there will surely be fruit for the kingdom. This passage deserves a bit more attention before I move on. We are looking at the fields wrong, it seems. We see them growing, but not yet ready. We tend to see ourselves that way. We are works in progress. That much is true. But, we allow this to become an excuse for inaction. He hasn’t finished with me yet, so I’m not yet ready. Maybe next year, God. We are hardly unique in this. Even the great men of God that we find in Scripture were inclined to such hesitation when they received His call. Moses was pretty sure God had the wrong man. Joshua may have felt much the same, we don’t know. Others had their moments of doubt and uncertainty as well. Look at Jeremiah, who was sure he was entirely too young to be heard as he spoke God’s message to Israel. Yet, the power of God is made manifest as these imperfect vessels of flesh bear His witness before the world. They that know us best cannot but recognize that our words and our actions are not wholly our own. We are of one accord with Him in Whom we live and move and have being, but greater is He that is in us than ever we are in ourselves!
The fields are ready. The laborers have been faithful to sow and to water and to weed. And already, our Lord says, the reaper is being paid. Why is he being paid? Because he is already gathering the fruit of that harvest ‘for life eternal.’ While syntax makes clear that this life eternal is the goal, it leaves much unclear. Is it the goal of the harvesting alone, or also of the wages received? Is that ‘life eternal’ payment for the labor or is it to be understood as the purpose of the harvest? If we continue to hold that the angels are the harvesters, as they are in the parable of the wheat and the tares, how does one pay an angel? Are they not already of an eternal nature? Is so, then giving them wages of eternal life seems a bit superfluous. On the other hand, I suppose it’s possible that they have already received these wages in advance, and are now simply earning what was already received.
This is certainly a reasonable way of looking at the Christian life. We do not earn a wage from God. He does not owe us anything. Indeed, He has already paid us and then some. He has taken on our legal liabilities, paid our debt to His own court. And to this He has added a dowry beyond price that He might have us for His Son’s bride. Even this was not sufficient in His sight, so He has blessed us with every matter of provision. He showers us with His goodness, a constancy in gift-giving that would leave the most romantic of men embarrassed by comparison. How else can one respond to such a loving devotion than to do what we can to be worthy of all that attention? As we walk, we seek to walk worthy of what has already been given us. We have no need for more. There is nothing left to earn. There is only gratitude to be manifested for what we have had already.
In fairness, I’m not sure this fits particularly well with what I am reading in John, but the point remains. The one who reaps is receiving wages. This is what we hear from Jesus. These are present tense activities. They are reaping and they are receiving now. Wow! What is this other than to say that the Day of the Lord is now! Even today, our tendency is to see this as some future event, yet to be seen. But, if Jesus is consistent in His application of the harvest, then isn’t He saying it’s already come? I suppose we may have to learn to think of it as both present and future simultaneously. For those who have departed this life, it is already decided. That final moment in the valley of decision may be pending, but the decision itself is no longer in doubt.
One thing we can be certain of amidst all the questions: Those whom the harvesters gather in are assuredly gathered unto life eternal. The fruit of those who grow in Christ, those in whom the seed of the Word has been nurtured and well-tended, is righteousness. Righteousness was the seed, and righteousness must surely be the crop that grows of such good seed. Behold, the fields are white! They are white because they are clothed in the righteousness of Christ! These are fields from which the tares have already been removed. No impurities remain, so the harvesters can now do their job. And, just look at that promise at the end: he who sows and he who reaps rejoice together! We’ll be dancing with the angels, if indeed we have been faithful to sow into the lives of those around us.
There is one other aspect of the harvest that deserves earnest and considered attention. The harvest belongs to God. It is in His hands to increase that harvest or to withhold it. It is in His provenance to bless or to curse. My how we have learned to hand half of that power to the devil! In so doing, it seems to me we have blinded ourselves to a major aspect of God’s methods of tending His fields. Look across the history of His people. There have been times when their provision was great and everybody prospered. There have also been times when the famine was so great, the harvest so devastated, that His people were all but destroyed. Where is this famine ever laid out as having been done by His enemy? We have to blind ourselves to God’s own declarations to leave such power in His enemy’s hands! He repeatedly explains to us that both the blessing and the curse are His to wield. If Satan moves, it is only with permission from the throne of heaven. If he is allowed to harass, it is only to the extent that God allows, and it is only to serve His purposes, however unwillingly that rebel may serve.
The harvest was and is a means by which God speaks to His own. If the times of plenty seem to be turning into times of lack, we need not go binding this and loosing that. What sort of pagans are we? No! Those times when everything seems to be taken away are there to awaken us. They are God’s shout, pointing out that our ways have led us off course. When God’s people wandered from pursuing His directions and His methods, He allowed the enemies of His people to come in and attack the harvest. It would seem that empty stomachs sharpen the mind. If our provision seems to be dwindling, it is not time to go hunting for devils, it’s time to examine ourselves. It’s time to repent for real and in earnest and pursue our Beloved with a greater devotion. It’s time to reconsider our ways. It’s time to really consider what we have been doing. Are we laboring as we ought? Are we doing as we were instructed? Is the purpose of our creation being fulfilled by our actions? Is God truly the director of our steps and our words, or has He become mere window dressing for us?
It might do us well to look at the state of our provision as a thermometer, an early indicator of our spiritual health, rather than just the measure of material wealth. I am reminded of John’s prayer for Gaius: “May you prosper in all respects just as your soul prospers” (3Jn 2). He is praying that the physical manifestation of Gaius’ life would reflect his true inner estate. Health in body is but a sham if it is not the reflection of a healthy spirit. Riches are a trap, if they are not viewed in the light of kingdom economics. It is fitting that all these things should be the possession of the child of God, but only as the soul prospers. That must come first. “Seek ye first the kingdom of God…” See to His concerns, and He will assuredly see to yours.
Recall that God’s justice tends toward the ironic. If your circumstances are troubled, it is time to take a spiritual health exam.
How easy it is to skip past this. How easy it is to settle in frustration over circumstances rather than seek understanding and change. For myself, I have seen even in the last days and weeks just how easily I can lose sight of my Provider. Circumstances bring a time of leanness, and how am I reacting? Truth be told, I react poorly. I get focused on how to get through. I get focused on what can be cut out, what can be shuffled to make ends meet. Worse yet, I start prioritizing my needs not only above my family’s but above my God’s. Oh! How He must draw me up short with a lesson such as this one! Suddenly, perspective is forced to change. It’s not about how to make it through. It’s about how I got here.
There is a place for patient endurance, and now that I am in that place, that is my proper response, but only in part. There is a far more important matter than enduring what my behaviors have earned for a time. That is the matter of understanding what it is in my behaviors that He is drawing attention to. What is it He is seeking to work on in me that brings this necessary discipline? What use whining about the discipline?
Every child learns how to put up with discipline. Some deal with it by shutting it out, doing what they can to ignore it until it goes away. Oh! Don’t play such a game with Father God! If He goes away, know that you have won your petty victory, but it is unto death. Some deal with it by doing the minimum it will take to turn aside punishment, and then returning to their own ways as soon as the crisis has passed. In this, they fail to recognize that they are only ensuring another occasion to learn what they failed to learn this time. Some run away. Some look for other ways to buck the authority that has come down on them, seeking other things to get away with to compensate for this restriction on their freedoms.
It takes character to actually accept and learn from discipline. For myself, I have gone through too many of the reactions that I listed out in the previous paragraph. I have experienced those responses for myself, both in my youthful dealing with parents and, yes, in my supposedly mature dealing with a heavenly Father. These responses are, in and of themselves, sufficient proof that I still stand in need of His discipline.
Oh, Father. I so hope that I am learning from You. I so hope that my response to Your efforts is growing wiser with time. But, I know there are things right now that I have been unwilling to deal with. If I consult myself this morning, I have to confess I’m still unwilling to deal with them. Lord, I need to see the proof of Your promise, that You will come and so work within me as to move me from unwillingness to cooperation. I need You so deeply in this moment, yet I fear I will again forget that need when it has passed. Let me not forget, my God, Your marvelous care for me. Let me not forget my desperate need for You. Let these ears not grow dull to what the Spirit is saying. Keep these eyes from settling for the physically obvious, and keep probing behind events until Your purposes and Your intentions are clear.
