Harvest Time (Pastor Greg Hudson, 11/04/23)

What was our opening song of the day?

A Mighty Fortress. Does anybody know who wrote that?

Martin Luther. Alright.

So, of course this last week represented a long time ago.

1517 is when Martin Luther kind of kicked off the Protestant Reformation.

And so that's why we get to be here today.

Because the idea that we are saved by grace.

We're saved because of what Jesus has done for us.

And so with that in mind, I wanted to look a little bit back.

Some of you were here two weeks ago.

Some of you weren't. So this is either a quiz to see if you remember.

Or it's a quick rundown of the sermon from two weeks ago.

So, we talked about the ABCs. The foundation of the Christian church.

Does anybody remember what A stood for?

Anybody remember?

Alright, very good. So the A is from Romans 3.23 where it says,

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

That is a reminder that we are all sinners.

So then what's the B? Does anybody remember?

Behold the Lamb. That was kind of the focus of the sermon of that week.

Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

And that's what Martin Luther's message was all about.

That we're saved by grace.

That because of what Jesus has done for us, we can be saved.

And those sins are going to be taken away.

All have sinned. The wages of sin is death.

But the gift of God is eternal life.

And then what's the C? Anybody remember?

Come unto me, all you who weary and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

So we're all sinners, but we have a Savior.

And Jesus gives us all an invitation to come to Him.

To be saved and to appreciate all that He has done for us.

And so with that in mind, looking way back at the Reformation.

Looking back two weeks to a sermon.

Let's bow our heads and have a prayer as we continue on this morning.

Dear God, we thank you for this Sabbath morning.

We thank you for the words that have been read from your scripture.

We thank you for the message and song that we can surrender all of ourselves to you.

And Lord, as we open up your word this morning, may we be blessed.

May we be reminded of all that you do for us.

And all that you have in store for us.

In your name we pray, amen.

So the sermon today is called Harvest Time.

And you probably have noticed as you drive around that it's fall.

There's pumpkins, there's corn stalks, there's all those different decorations.

So what are we talking about?

There was a rare event that took place about two months ago.

This is a baseball story, but just hang in there because it's not a baseball story.

It's more than a baseball story.

This gentleman is Michael Lorenzen.

He's a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies.

And I'm sorry if you're Braves fans.

I know the Phillies knocked the Braves out of the playoffs.

But the good news about that is then they subsequently were knocked out of the playoffs.

But Michael Lorenzen, about two months ago, had been traded to the Phillies.

And he was pitching for the first time in his new home stadium in Philadelphia.

In front of the home crowd.

And as he was pitching the game was going on and it kind of got to the middle of the game.

And suddenly people watching the score, they noticed something.

You know, third or fourth inning.

And no one on the other team had gotten a hit yet.

And if you follow baseball at all, you know that if someone pitches a no-hitter,

that's a really big deal and a rare thing for a pitcher to not allow the other team to get a hit.

So people started to pay attention.

They started to notice this.

Fourth inning, fifth inning, seventh inning, eighth inning.

And finally, at the end of the ninth inning, sure enough, after throwing 124 pitches,

that's a lot of pitches for one game.

It was Michael's career high.

He had struck out five.

He had walked four.

But he had thrown a no-hitter as the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Washington Nationals back in August.

So as I said, this is not a baseball story.

This is not Sports Center.

So why are we talking about a game?

Why are we talking about this particular game?

Well, after the game, after the match, they interviewed the pitcher as you might expect.

And they asked him about his no-hitter.

It was the 14th no-hitter in Philadelphia history.

And this is what he said.

He said, I didn't strike out the world in this game.

He only struck out five of the opposing team.

But then he went on and said, I just had God's grace today.

I definitely have to thank him for today and give him all the glory just to be able to keep me calm and trusting in him.

Whatever happened, I was just going to trust in him, and that's kind of what I've been doing all season, trying to just lean on him.

So he had done the biggest thing in his sporting career.

He had thrown a no-hitter.

He had a microphone in his face, interviewed in front of thousands of people that were going to watch this on the newscast that evening.

And he took that opportunity to give glory to God.

Now, the fact of the matter is, I'm looking at this room, including myself, and there's a good chance that none of us, nobody here, is going to throw a no-hitter in the major leagues.

There's a couple of young folks back there.

We'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

But there's a good chance that most of us are not going to throw a no-hitter.

Most of us are not going to be interviewed by the newscaster and ask about some great achievement that we did.

So we're not going to have quite that opportunity.

But could we have the opportunity to uplift Jesus?

Could we have the opportunity to tell someone else what God has done for us?

I want to go in our Bibles today to Matthew chapter 9.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention

And as I've said the last time I was here, we'll try to have the verses on the screen.

But I also really hope that you'll open up the Bibles for yourself, because that's going to be more impactful, whether it's on your phone, your iPad, or in a physical Bible.

If you have it to read for yourself, that's going to be more meaningful.

So Matthew chapter 9 verse 35.

Matthew 9:35

It says, Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people.

So that verse kind of wraps up what Jesus' ministry was all about.

Kind of a three-fold ministry.

He was teaching, he was preaching, and he was healing.

And that's what he was doing as he went through the area.

And because of the way that he spoke, because of the teachings that he shared, because of the healings and the miracles that he did, people were interested in what Jesus was doing.

And so verse 36 says, When he saw the multitudes, lots and lots of people were coming to check him out.

When Jesus saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered like sheep having no shepherd.

So Jesus was doing all these things.

The people were coming to him.

And as Jesus saw the crowds, his heart was broken.

He knew that they needed something.

He knew that in a few years he was going to be leaving them.

And he knew that he was just in one location.

And so something more was needed.

And so it's in this context of Jesus caring about this crowd of people that the next verses are given.

Chapter 9 of Matthew, verse 37.

It says, Then Jesus said to his disciples, The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.

Therefore pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.

And Luke, it says the harvest is great.

There's a lot to be harvested.

There's a lot that there's an opportunity.

And when the Bible talks about a harvest, it's not talking about the farmer in the field,

but it's talking in the spiritual sense of people who are ready to be part of God's kingdom.

Jesus had just seen there's a multitude of people around him.

He says the harvest is great.

These are people who are this close who are ready to be part of God's kingdom.

The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

I wonder, did anybody have a garden this summer?

Any gardens?

What are some things you had in your garden this summer?

Tomatoes, peppers, squash, anything else?

Yeah, there's some traditional summer things.

And so the time's definitely passed now that we've gotten cold in the last week.

But as the summer came to an end, that's when you could go out and pick those cucumbers.

Or maybe you had a plant.

You probably got a little seedling, a tiny little plant, and you planted that maybe back in April or May.

And then as you watered it, at some point that little tomato plant first got maybe a couple little white flowers on it.

And you got excited because, all right, this is doing what it's supposed to do.

But did you go out and pick the white flowers?

No, no, because it's not done yet.

It's just the first step.

And then those little flowers fall off, and now there's a little green, a little green mass there.

And that's the little green tomato.

Did you pull off the green tomato?

Sometimes people like to fry up the green tomatoes, but most of the time you leave it on there because it's not quite ready.

And then as another week or so passes, that green suddenly becomes streaked with red.

And then when it's just right, that's when you pluck that tomato because the harvest was ready.

But the harvest would not have been ready in August if a plant or a seed had not been planted back in April or May.

You've got to plant the seed if you want to get the harvest.

There's some steps that take place there.

And once that seed is in the ground, it's our role to water, to weed, maybe to fertilize or whatever it is.

But we know that when things are ready to be harvested.

And Jesus looked at that crowd and he said, there's a group here.

The harvest is ready, but we don't have the people.

We don't have the laborers.

We don't have the workers to go and make this happen.

Let's flip back to another story, John chapter 4.

John 4 · chapter mention

John chapter 4, Jesus is going through a particular area.

John 4 · chapter mention

He's making his way.

We're actually going to go back a few verses before that.

In John chapter 4 and verse 4, it says Jesus needed to go through Samaria.

John 4 · chapter mention

Jesus was on a journey from Judea.

He left Galilee and it said he needed to go to Samaria.

Now this is not what most of the Jews of the day would have done.

They would have done anything they could.

They would have added time to their journey in order to not go through Samaria.

But Jesus needed to go through Samaria.

And as we see this story, we recognize that Jesus had a divine appointment.

There was someone in Samaria that Jesus needed to meet at a particular time,

on a particular day, and he had a mission to be there.

And so he came into Samaria and it says that he sat down by the well.

Jacob's well was there, verse 6.

Being weary from his journey, he sat down by the well and it was the sixth hour.

It was the middle of the day.

It was noon.

It was hot.

And then we come to verse 7.

And it says,

A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

And Jesus said to her,

Give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.

And so then the woman was a little surprised.

The woman of Samaria said to him,

How is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman,

for the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans?

And so we see here Jesus sitting down by a well, having a conversation.

And a little bit later when the disciples come back,

they are shocked that Jesus is having this conversation.

There were lots of reasons for Jesus to not have this conversation.

One, as we already kind of said, Jesus was a Jew.

The woman was a Samaritan.

They didn't usually intermingle.

They didn't talk to each other.

The second reason is that this woman was a woman.

And in that culture, if the man and the woman weren't related,

they typically didn't talk to each other.

That was outside of the cultural norms.

And then number three, as we go down through this story,

we see that this woman perhaps had some questionable morals, you could say,

that she was on her fifth or sixth man there,

and there was lots of things that Jesus would not normally,

the people of that community would not have talked to this woman.

And yet Jesus went out of His way to talk to this woman.

And I wonder, do we ever look for reasons to not talk to people?

Do we ever look for reasons to not share our faith, to talk about Jesus?

That was kind of the idea of the Sabbath School lesson today,

if you studied this week about looking for excuses and looking for reasons to not share.

I don't think we would ever admit, we would never say,

that we don't want to share our faith with someone.

But the way we talk, the way we act, you know, oh, that person is whatever.

Whether it's the way someone dresses, their race, their politics, whatever it is,

we look for reasons to not talk to people.

But Jesus looked for reasons to share, to talk to people.

And so Jesus asked this woman for a drink, and she was surprised by that.

Then we skip down to verse 13 as they continued talking.

Jesus answered and said to her,

whoever drinks of this water in the well here will be thirsty again.

This summer it was hot.

Last Saturday it was hot.

Even at the Fall Festival it was hot.

And so you had to stay hydrated, you had to drink.

And if you had to drink, you know, a little while later you were going to be thirsty again.

And Jesus says, if you drink the water from this well, you're going to be thirsty.

But the water I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

You're going to get thirsty if you drink this water,

but I've got something that if you drink it, you're not going to be thirsty again.

But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.

The water I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

And this really caught the woman's attention.

And she said, I want that.

How can I get that water?

And they continued on in their conversation.

And Jesus talked to her about, oh go and get your husband.

And that's when it kind of came out, you know,

that you've had five husbands and the one you're with now isn't your husband.

And suddenly she realized that this conversation, that this person was something out of the ordinary.

And they started to talk about the Messiah, the spiritual things that she's trying to change the topic.

And notice verse 25, it says, The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ.

And when he comes, he's going to tell us, he's going to correct us, he's going to tell us all the true things.

And then Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he.

This was one of, if not the very first person that Jesus revealed himself to, that he is the Messiah.

He told this random Samaritan woman by a well.

This was one of the very first people that Jesus revealed his full ministry to.

He said, you're looking for the Messiah?

Well, let me tell you right now, you are looking at the Messiah.

I'm the one, I'm the Messiah.

And the woman is simply stunned.

The woman is amazed.

And the very next verse, the disciples are coming back.

It says, at this point, his disciples came, they'd gone into town, they marveled that he talked with a woman.

And yet no one said, what do you seek?

Why are you talking with her?

These disciples are just shocked by this scene.

And the woman is so shocked that it says she left her water pot, went into the city, and told everybody,

Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did.

Could this be the Christ?

And so you almost have people crossing their paths.

The disciples had gone into town to get lunch.

Jesus is sitting there talking to this woman.

As the disciples come back, they've got the little sack lunch, falafels, bread, whatever they happen to have with them.

And they see the woman and they almost, it seems to me, they cross paths.

And the disciples are coming and the woman is leaving.

And the disciples come with some food.

And in a little bit, the woman comes back with a community.

She comes back with a town of people.

The disciples had been in the town and they were looking to buy some food because they thought Jesus was hungry.

But they missed a community that was hungry for Jesus.

They missed the people who were hungry for the message that he had.

And so, sure enough, it says they went out of the city and came to him.

There was a harvest that was there, a harvest that was ready, but the disciples missed it.

The disciples thought they were getting what Jesus wanted, but they didn't.

Now notice what happens.

Verse 31, it says, In the meantime, his disciples urged him, saying, Rabbi, eat.

We got your lunch.

That's why we left you here.

But he said to them, I have food to eat, of which you do not know.

Can you picture the disciples' confusion here?

You were hungry.

We went to the closest market.

We got the quickest fast food that was there.

How?

Who?

What did you eat?

The disciples said to one another, Has anyone brought him anything to eat?

What's Jesus talking about?

And then Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

That's what Jesus is talking about.

My food is to work for all these people, to share with all these people about what my mission is,

about what my message is.

That's what is sustaining me, Jesus says.

And the next verse, he says, 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.

So that's a message right there of what Jesus' mission was, to share with the community,

to share with a group of people.

If you were here and we did Mission Spotlight, incredibly huge numbers of the world,

of people that don't even know Jesus exists or young people who don't even know what a sermon is or whatever was mentioned.

Whole countries, and we can think of India or wherever and think, What can I do for India?

And the reality is, we can send some money, but again, most of us are not going to India.

Most of us aren't going to make a difference in India.

But could we make a difference in Ringgold?

Could we make a difference in North Georgia with a young person who doesn't know what a sermon is, who has never heard a sermon?

I think that with God's grace, we can.

I see back here there's a baptistry.

It's my dream, it's my goal that we're going to use this thing on a regular basis, like once a quarter, once a month?

Could that happen?

Could we say, OK, on the second Sabbath of the month, before we have potluck, we're going to have a baptism.

So when somebody sends in a Bible study lesson or says, Hey, I want to get baptized.

What can we do?

We can say, Well, guess what?

You know, the second Sabbath of the month, we're going to fill that up.

We're going to have it ready because there's a harvest that is out there.

We just have to find it.

So what can we do?

Now, most of us, like I said, we're not buying a plane ticket to India.

So what can we do to make a difference?

Here's a homework assignment for you.

Get something to write on.

Maybe a little card in the PRAC in front of you that says prayer requests or just your bulletin.

Here's your homework assignment.

Write down at least one name of someone you know that you think is desperately in need of Jesus.

And now that is your prayer list.

That's who you're praying for.

Guess what?

You know people that I don't know.

I can't pray for those people because I don't even know who they are.

I don't know their name.

But you have a sphere of influence.

You have people that you see, whether it's only when you go to Wal-Mart or the person walking their dog across the street here.

Or you have people that you interact with that you know.

You have relatives and family members and friends.

Write down one name.

Maybe you have five names that you can think of.

Okay, that's even better.

Write down a name and start praying for someone that you know that is desperately in need of Jesus.

Jesus says the harvest is great.

The harvest is ready.

The fields are white for harvest.

We can't say, oh, I just planted the seed.

It's four months until we can pick the tomatoes.

Well, guess what?

The Holy Spirit planted some seed four months ago that's used somebody else.

And maybe you are the one that's going to be praying for people.

Maybe you are the one that's going to be able to invite someone to church, invite someone to read a book, invite someone to do a Bible study.

Jesus said the laborers are few.

Well, whose fault is that?

Could that be my fault?

Could that be our fault?

I know, I guarantee that you have talked to someone this past week about something.

You have talked about something.

Maybe you talked about, oh, it got cold all of a sudden.

Anybody have that conversation?

You had to scrape your windshields off.

Or maybe you talked about, you know, a game or the World Series that just ended.

You had some conversation this week.

Let me tell you something I talked about in the last little bit.

And I know there are some families in this church that have been affected in the recent past.

But about a week ago, my wife was at work.

She had to go to work at 5 o'clock in the morning.

And she called me, so I was still asleep.

She called me and said, someone had told her that a house across the street was on fire.

And it was the neighborhood across the street.

But I went out on our porch and I looked out.

And sure enough, I could see a house on fire.

Now, I had been laying there in bed and I had heard all of these sirens going by.

And we often hear lots of sirens.

So I didn't think anything about it except, wow, that's a lot of sirens.

But then I looked out and sure enough, there was a house on fire.

And I think I got one more.

That's what it looked like the next morning.

You know, the roof was gone.

The attic is gone.

Nobody got hurt, thankfully.

But do you think I told anybody that story?

Oh, I definitely did.

Guess what?

I woke up this morning and looked out and there was a house on fire.

That was a conversation that I had because it had impacted me, because it was important to me.

And so I shared that story.

You have shared stories with people in the past week.

I want to read a story here.

This was something I saw on Facebook about a week ago.

There's a gentleman I know.

His name is Dan Cerns.

He's the president of the Central California Conference.

And his thing, his passion is giving out glow tracks, you know, little glow tracks.

I think I've got one in here somewhere.

But everywhere he goes, he gives people glow tracks, just a little thing like this.

He gives people two glow tracks on two different topics.

And this is what he wrote.

He said, I kept trying, I'm going to read what he wrote.

I kept trying to look away as my seatmate watched a horribly brutal movie on a flight to Orlando recently.

Every time I glanced over someone else was being murdered.

I prayed for my seatmate to find peace in Jesus.

So he's sitting on the plane, cramped in.

The person next to him is watching this movie, which he doesn't really want to watch.

He said, the movie comes to an end about 15 minutes before landing.

So I asked him, what brings you to Orlando?

A golf course convention, I'm an assistant manager, so forth.

I asked him what he liked best about his work, how long he'd been in that type of work, how he got started doing it.

And then I gave him two glow tracks and said, here's a dose of inspiration.

I think you'll enjoy.

And the guy says, thanks.

I needed that.

There's so many problems in this world.

It seems to me like it's getting close to the end of the world.

What do you think?

And my friend said, I think you're right.

The Bible gives us some outlines of prophecy and history that show us where we're living near the end before Jesus comes back, just like he promised to do.

And the seatmate says, really?

My cousins and I have been talking about the end of the world a lot recently.

I even started reading the book of Revelation.

And he says he pulled out his phone, the same one he'd been watching that movie on, and opened the Bible app.

He said, here's where I'm reading next.

Can you tell me anything about this?

And my friend said, I was stunned.

His next chapter was Revelation 14, which if you are familiar with that, that's kind of the mission statement of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.

So he's like, can I tell you?

Oh, yeah.

How much do you want to hear?

As much as you can tell me in the next 10 minutes.

And then Dan says, we can never read hearts.

Treat all people as honest and receptive until proven otherwise.

And even if they aren't right now, they might be right in a few weeks.

We never know what conversation we can have where someone is ready to learn more about Jesus.

Revelation 14, 6 says, I saw another angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel that all have sinned,

that behold the Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, that we have an invitation to come to him,

having the everlasting gospel to preach to those who dwell on the earth, to every nation and tribe and tongue and people,

whether it's in India, whether it's in Ringgol.

There's people that need to hear this message about Jesus.

So what can we do?

Your homework assignment.

Write down a name of someone that you can be praying for.

Write down just one name and be praying.

How can you make a difference in their life?

John 4, the story goes on.

It says, and many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the woman who testified.

He told me all that I ever did.

So this woman shared her story, shared her testimony, and the people said, I believe because of what you told me.

But then notice a few verses later, verse 41, it says, many more believed because of his own word.

As they heard the woman, they came to hear Jesus and even more believed because of that.

And they said, now we believe not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him and we know that this is the Christ.

Now, Michael Lorenzen pitched Philadelphia Phillies, threw a no-hitter, struck out five, walked four, got interviewed on the news,

and said, you know what, God, I've been trusting in God.

He's been giving me strength.

As I said, most of us are not going to pitch a no-hitter.

Most of us are not going to be interviewed.

But as I read about Michael's story, the story took me back just a little bit further to his testimony.

Because Michael Lorenzen had been brought up in a broken home.

His parents were divorced, were abusing drugs and alcohol, and by the eighth grade, he was normally regularly getting drunk, getting high by eighth grade.

And he said when he was 16 years old, a bunch of his friends were together.

They were high, smoking weed or whatever, and they were like, let's go down to the pier and see if we can get some food.

So they're down at the pier, these teenagers that are drugged out, and there's an old guy that comes up to them and he says,

could I tell you guys something about God?

And they kind of chuckled, sure, go ahead, you know, planning to laugh at this guy.

And the old man said something to the effect of, you know, it's more than just believing that God exists, but are you ready to live your life for God?

A bunch of teenagers drugged out listening to one old man talk about living their life for God.

And there was at least one, maybe only one, but at least one who was impacted by that message.

The Holy Spirit was working through this drug-induced high in this teenager.

And shortly thereafter, Michael Lorenzen found himself in church giving his heart, giving his life to God.

And several years later, Michael found himself in the Phillies Stadium pitching a no-hitter.

He found himself being interviewed, giving glory to God.

Now most of us aren't going to be interviewed, but do we have the opportunity to be like that old man and say,

hey, could I tell you something about God?

I think that we do.

I think that we have that opportunity every week, maybe even every day,

if we just open our eyes and look at the harvest that God has in store for us.

Let's bow our heads for prayer.

Dear God, forgive us for times when we've had opportunities to talk about You, and we haven't.

Forgive us for times when we've let those divine connections slip through without sharing our faith.

But Lord, help us to open up our eyes to the people that we know, the people that we meet, the people that we care about.

Help us to see those whose hearts are ready to take another step with You.

Give us the courage that we need.

Give us the faith that we need.

And Lord, help us to be laborers for You.

Guide and bless us.

In Your name we pray. Amen.

We're going to sing now number 457.

I love to tell the story.

Please join us as we sing.