John 4:35-38 Say not you, There are yet four months, and then comes harvest? behold, I say to you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields… I. A SEARCHING LOOK INTO THE PAST. There can be little doubt that, when Jesus said the fields were white already to harvest, he meant his disciples to consider the company of Samaritans eagerly coming out of the city towards them. Why were they coming? Jesus knew that the coming was not sufficiently explained by saying that the woman's report had stirred up the curiosity of the people in the city. Jesus rejoiced in the fresh proof he had got of how people everywhere were waiting for the Messiah. Even the Samaritan was waiting, and, if the Samaritan, how much more the Jew! People were ready to run in any direction where they might find one to answer their expectations. And Jesus looked upon this expectant state of mind as the harvest of what had been sown long ago. He did not forget his Father's faithful messengers in ages past, with their testimonies, messages, and predictions. And so we may be sure Jesus would ever have us consider how the present is the result of the past. The valuable and gladdening things we have today did not spring up all in a night. This faith in a coming Messiah had been growing for generations. At first the faith of only a few, it had come to be the faith of more, and then the faith of all. II. THE PECULIAR WORK OF THE DISCIPLES. They had to he in readiness for a people who, more or less, were ready for them. When harvest time comes, how the reapers are on the look out! Reaping is not like some sorts of work, it cannot be spread over a long term. And these disciples were to be just as reapers, coreapers with Jesus himself. If the farmer has a large extent of ground under corn, he cannot reap it all with his own hands; he must have helpers proportioned to the ground that has to be covered. While Jesus was in the body of his humiliation, he worked with bodily restrictions upon him. Hence the need of colleagues who could do what he was not able to do himself, going forth each one of them, specially authorized and endowed to communicate the blessings of the Christ to needy and eager Israel. We must ever he on the look out for harvest work. III. A PATHETIC ELEMENT IN AGRICULTURE. Of all who go out to sow in the sowing time, not all survive to the harvest time. This must happen every year, and so no proverb is more likely to start into utterance than that which speaks of the sower being one, and the reaper another. But when Jesus comes to dilate on the higher harvest, he speaks of a state of things where nearly always the sower is one, and the reaper another. The necessity of the case makes it so. Superstitions and traditions have to be overthrown. But when the sower for God well understands that he cannot also reap, then all is right. He does his work with his own joy in the doing of it; he does the work into which God has put him; he is sure of the equity, nay more, of the love, of his Master; and thus he is sure also that the due reward will duly come. The sower and the reaper will rejoice together; and what a new, unimaginable experience that will be! Here sowers have a measure of rejoicing together, and reapers a measure of rejoicing together; but the sowers and reapers must be all together, looking upon the work before they can see it in all its wisdom and fulness. The earliest prophet of the old covenant must clasp hands with the latest servant of the new.-Y. Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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