Harvest Time

winter wheat growing

October already.... cool, clear, crisp nights and mornings and comfortable days. The smell of a bonfire, weiner roasts and smores. Mulled ciders and pumpkin fields full and ready for picking. Apples, pecans, signs of squirrels getting ready for the winter approaching. Here in Tennessee the colors of autumn are everywhere as the leaves have started changing and some of the sugar maples are gently flowing from green to red as if someone is pouring red water gently over the top and it rolls down the tree. Saturdays filled with people raking and burning leaves. I love autumn. I always tell my grandchildren that the trees are going to sleep and when they wake up in the spring we can go fishing. They always wait and when spring comes and the leaves start to come out they come running and saying "look Mamaw - the trees are waking up!"

God too loves the spring and autumn. He set feast days around them, foreshadows of things to come. In the spring is the celebration of passover and death exchanged for life, the giving of the law and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Everything about the spring points to the death and rebirth experience. Fall is the time of change. Everything in creation changes in the fall. The feast begin with the Feast of Trumpets which always happens at the harvest time. It's the time of the new year - new beginnings, emphasized in the Feast of Tabernacles which is the foreshadowing of the time He will tabernacle among us. It's celebrated each year by living in a tent for a week to remember the wilderness experience and to look forward to the new world, new age to come. Paul said that we would not all sleep; meaning we would not all die physical death. Some of us will be alive when Jesus returns and be changed. At the last trumpet, Paul said, we will experience the corruptible putting on incorruption, the dead in Christ will rise first and then the rest will be caught up to meet Him in the air. This last trumpet blast is on Yom Kipper every year. So we don't know the day and the hour He will come, because that's the Father's decision only, and the Feast of Trumpets is not set on the same day. None of the feasts are - they all float about the calendar based on harvests and new moons.

In Luke 10:2,3 "He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves." and in Matthew 13:24-30 Jesus gives the parable of the wheat and the tares - a harvest time parable.

"Jesus told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.  The owner's servants came to him and said, 'Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?' " 'An enemy did this,' he replied. "The servants asked him, 'Do you want us to go and pull them up?' " 'No,' he answered, 'because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.' "

Some of you reading this may be farmers or grew up farmers. Some may have never seen a farm or raised a garden. I did not grow up on a farm, but I was born and raised in central Indiana among the corn, soybeans and wheat fields. My father was from southeastern Kansas and we lived there a couple of times in my 5th and 6th grade years, but visited every single summer until I was married. That was wheat and sorghum country. I raised or was part of raising gardens my whole life, so I know a little bit about plants, farms and growing things.

With corn and sorghum, which is like corn, the plants grow thick stalks and grow fairly tall so they're planted a little ways apart from each other to allow for weed tilling. Great care is taken when weeding so that the shallow roots of the plants don't get pulled up, but they are fairly easy to till. Soybeans a little less easy, but done well until the plant gets too bushy, then the shade from the plant chokes out the weeds.

Wheat is different. It's in the grass family (well corn and sorghum are grasses too). When you try to pull up a dandelion plant, it will come up with earth and grass attached to it. Likewise with wheat and the weeds that grow in among them. Wheat is planted primarily in the fall - 3/4 of the wheat crops in the US production are winter crops. They are planted usually between August and October and harvested in the spring between May and July. The spring wheat crops are planted April - May and harvested August to October. Do you start to see a picture emerge her of the appointed times (spring and fall feasts) and the parable of the wheat and tares?

ripened wheat

Wheat crops are simply breathtaking - they are fields of the brightest most beautiful lush green you will ever see when they are growing. And when they are ripe they are like oceans of the most beautiful gold moving with the wind and the breeze. You cannot see the weeds. They have come up with the wheat, grown with the wheat, enmeshed their roots with the wheat. If you tried to pull a weed up, it would be like pulling up a dandelion - you'd have the roots and wheat with it in a lump. Jesus said "let them grow together until harvest".

When the combines come in to harvest the wheat the machines are incredible. It's cut about 2-3 inches up from the ground leaving a thick golden stubble. The shaft is the straw and is bundled along and sold for bedding, the weeds are burned. The wheat grain is sifted to remove the chaff and leave only the tender buds for grinding into flour. The only thing of value in the whole of the field is this bud. In it is sustaining life. It has grown and survived storms, winds, rains, droughts and the weeds. It survived and grew to fruition in spite of all the plant went through.

I think that Jesus was telling us many things in this parable and his calling for laborers. Each time Jesus referred to mankind he puts him in a context of agriculture. Something that is organic, it grows and bears edible fruit and life giving sustenance to the body. Many of you reading this will have all kinds of bells and whistles going off, some won't. Some won't even understand - and that's okay. Jesus spoke in parables for a reason. We are the wheat fields that the Father has so carefully planted. Entwined and unrecognizable to the one standing on the sidelines are the weeds that are among the wheat plants. To the naked eye, they look the same. But if you taste one of those weeds, you could be poisoned, at best it would be a very bitter taste in your mouth and could leave you scarred or your taste buds messed up. But the wheat plant knows what the weeds are and where they came from. They've been growing with them. The rain falls on the whole field - on the just and the unjust - when it rains. The storms hit the same field - the just and the unjust. Some of those weeds can so cross pollenate themselves that you would think you're looking a wheat plant. It wouldn't be until you tasted the bud that you would know it wasn't.

Among us - all around us - everyday is the battle over our lives, our minds, our hearts. The fields are now ripening - they are becoming more and more gold and the weeds are getting desperate not to be found out. Some of them may even think they're wheat so they stand tall and proud. They linked themselves at the root system with the wheat so they know they can't be yanked out and they just might be able to slip by in the harvest. Jesus said the angels are going to harvest these fields - the laborers only work them. The angels will gather it all up starting with the wheat and they are well trained to know the difference.

Timothy talks about perilous times. Jesus said to guard our hearts and minds. Peter, James, John, Jude, Paul, Timothy - they all sent warnings out on what to look for, how to identify, how to stand, how to not lose heart. Paul describes the armor we must wear at all times. Be careful not to forsake sound doctrine. Evil does exist - it's living in the field with you.

A good rule of thumb is this - does the world hate you because of Him? Luke 21:17 "All men will hate you because of me". If not, chances are you've got the wrong gospel. Scripture will bear me out on this. The religious system, and the people in the world, all hated the followers of Jesus then and down through time. Rejoice if people persecute you and say all manner of evil against you, or accuse you falsely - that means you've got the right thing. If what you are following and what you believe is a social club that has the biggest gatherings, the most "peaceful" experiences, generates no persecution or rejection, does not stir up the pot of religion, then chances are you've got the wrong gospel. True followers are few. Always have been. They've never been large numbers of the population. Even many of Jesus own disciples turned and left Him because they could not embrace the hardness of His teachings. The true gospel is radical and it's life changing. So look around you - have you stirred the pot. Is their a mob inciting a riot against you? Does anyone hate you for His sake?

It's harvest time...... we better be ready when the angel harvesters come.