Harvest 2026 | The Harvest Is Plentiful

I've told you this before, but harvest is one of my favorite times

of the year.

I love seeing the leaves change color, I love the fresher

days, and I love to see our meeting houses up and down the country

being filled with produce from the land.

And as we celebrate the harvest, there's a sense that the

agricultural year has drawn to a slower pace with the busyness of

spring planting, the tending of crops in the summer, and now the

fields and plots in our gardens dug up as the harvest is

brought in.

Now, I didn't grow up on a farm.

Rather we had a home bakery and a large vegetable garden.

But my uncles were farmers and they made sure that I knew I how

to milk a cow.

I know these hands don't look like they could milk a cow, but I

was taught at the age of six to sit on a little stool and to repeat

the mantra, give, Daisy, give.

The kids have got to live.

And that's how I learned to milk a cow.

They then took me, whenever I was 10, into the milking parlour

with all of its suction cups.

And that wasn't for me.

For me, the stool under the cow was the place to be to get the

milk that was needed.

And then whenever I went to missionary training college over

in England, it wasn't just about drinking milk, it was about

how you would cook your chicken.

And that is getting it from running around the yard to getting

it into the pot to the plate.

And so a good firm little movement of the hand would make sure

all of that happened well and with greatest of care.

So I may not have grown up on a farm, I may not have lived in a

farm, but I'm open for any work that a labourer can offer in

terms of milking cows and getting chickens on the plate.

But we know that as the darker nights draw in, we know that the

growing season has come to an end.

Because the main part of the growing season is light.

We need the sunlight.

And yes, we can plant winter vegetables, but they only need a

certain amount of light.

But most of the produce that we have needs a good amount of light

each year.

But also our soil needs time to rest.

We know that it has to lie dormant for a period of time so that

as we plant seeds again, a new growth will come healthier.

And we understand the need to plant different things in different

places each year so that there's no disease or anything that

transfers from one year to the other.

So harvest feels like the coming to the end of a busy season,

not just for farmers, but for those who plant either plots at home

or in greenhouses.

See, and that's why we enjoy our harvest services, because for

one Sunday in the year, we pause and we give thanks to God for

his provision of our daily needs, rather than depending on the

efforts of our own hands.

And of course, for a number of years, my celebration of the harvest

had been very different than what I would know today.

And it would happen much earlier than October, because in

Malawi, where we lived before coming here, the harvest happens

in April, and it's a much different affair than here there,

whether be it in the city or in rural villages, everyone would

grow crops because you could quite literally grow what you would

need to eat.

And each house that you would go to has land somewhere where the

traditional crop of maize is.

A belt is grown, as we get it here for you.

And what's left is there's great expectation that following

the rains of December and early January, there'd be great joy

in the first cobs of corn being pulled, being boiled and enjoyed.

And then this was the time that corn would only be eaten in

this way, because normally it would be stripped of its kernels

as it is there, and then stored until it was needed to be

milled into flour and used to make what was the steam food called,

insima, and that's corn, flour and water boiled up together into

a stodgy pat of food that would fill your stomach and leave

you filled for the day.

The one thing that is interesting about the gathering in

of the harvest is that a certain amount of the first corn

that was harvested in Malawi is set aside in a storeroom until

the end of April.

And that's when the harvest services would be held.

Now, these weren't just times for gathering, to worship, to sing

harvest songs and decorate churches.

Indeed, there's very little decoration as everything that is

brought is presented at the front of the church building.

Family are named by family and they give as an expression of thankfulness

to God for his care and his generosity.

The leaders of the church would then distribute these harvest

gifts to the poor and to the needy.

And so when it comes to harvest here in Northern Ireland,

what are your thoughts about it?

Is it just another annual event of the church?

Is it a time to get our church buildings decorated and we invite

people in?

Maybe it's one of the few times that we come to church.

Or maybe has our society lost touch with the real source of our

food?

And do we consider the supermarkets to be the ones who provide

for us rather than our creator God?

I taught during My teaching practice at a school in rural North

Yorkshire.

And even there, the children believed that milk was made by the

supermarkets rather than coming from a cow.

And in fact, when I told them it did come from a cow, they were

greatly disgusted.

So why do we bother?

Why do we bother with all of this celebration of our food?

Well, we need to turn to God's word to discover that harvest is

not just a tradition of the church, but is, in fact, a command

from God.

We bring things in so that we can remember who God is to us.

We encourage our farming communities in the work that they

do so that we can know the blessing of God to us as we daily

rely on Him.

And in Exodus 23, we read about God's directions for his people.

And these directions or laws were given so that the children of

Israel would know how to live and how to work together, as well

as knowing God's best way for them as a community.

And so, of course, we know that that section in Scripture begins

with the Ten Commandments in chapter 20 of Exodus, and it finishes

in chapter 23 with a section on laws about the Sabbath and about

festivals.

God knew of the short memory his people would have.

They've already demonstrated that, as we've seen looking in Exodus,

that they forgot how good God was in getting them out of the land

of slavery.

And they complained and they grumbled.

So God put down then what they had to remember.

And so right from the beginning, he put in place the Sabbath

and festivals so that his people would never forget his saving

power and his provision for their needs in life.

And this is what we read in Exodus chapter 23 and verses 16 to

Exodus 23 · chapter mention

19.

God says, you shall keep the feast of harvest, of the first fruits

of your labor, of what you sow in the field.

You shall keep the feast of ingathering.

At the end of the year, when you gather in from the land the fruit

of your labor.

Three times in the year shall all your meals appear before the

Lord God.

You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with anything leavened,

or let the fat of my feast remain until the morning.

The best of the first fruits of your ground, you shall bring into

the house of the Lord your God.

The feast of harvest and the feast of ingathering are two different

festivals or feasts around the same theme.

The feast of ingathering is when all the crops had been taken

from the fields and brought into the storehouses, whereas the

feast of harvest was when the crops had been processed and were

ready to be eaten.

And these two feasts were very Particular in reminding the people

not only how God had sustained them in the wilderness, but also

how he has continued to remain faithful in providing food from his

creation so that his people can live and enjoy his blessing.

And so, I wonder, is harvest a time of true celebration for you

as it was intended for God's people long ago?

Is it a moment in life when you pause to thank God for His provision

and his care for you and your family?

Or has the lies of the world persuaded you that you are the provider

of everything you have, that it is you who meets the needs of

your home through your salary?

Rather than recognizing what we read in James chapter one and

verse 17, that every good and perfect gift is from above, coming

down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change

like shifting shadows.

See, throughout Scripture we're told who is the true source

of everything that we have and everything that we need.

And we can trust him because James tells us that he does not change

like shadows change as the light moves.

And this is where James gives us a New Testament perspective or

insight into the harvest.

You see, the harvest doesn't change.

Rather, the New Testament gives us a deeper image, a new perspective

of the harvest.

It doesn't take away from God's provision in meeting our day

to day needs.

Rather it shows us a greater part of God's constant care and provision

for us.

And so we go back to the Scripture passage through that I

read earlier in the service.

Because in Luke's Gospel we read of Jesus sending out the 72

to work in a new kind of harvest field.

Rather than it being an agricultural or horticultural field,

it's a spiritual field.

In verse 2, Jesus tells the 72 that the harvest is plentiful, but

the workers are few.

Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore to send out workers into

his harvest field.

Jesus is telling them that there is a bumper harvest ready to

be reaped.

And the rest of the passage goes on to record that all that the

72 did as they went throughout the region proclaiming the coming

kingdom of God.

And you know, as we sit here in Harvest Sunday, isn't it great

to see that.

That the harvest is plentiful?

Which one of us doesn't want a plentiful harvest?

Be it our farmers, be it our keen gardeners, or be it, be it whenever

we go into a supermarket or a shop and look at the fruit and veg

in front of us, don't we want a plentiful harvest, wherever that

may come from in the world?

Of course we do.

It's what we desire, because we know it's what we need.

But there's a reality of this harvest field that Jesus is sending

the 72 out into.

And so we get a look at what this harvest field is like.

Turns out that this harvest field is a place of predators, because

verse three tells us it is a place of wolves.

That is, it's a dangerous place.

So here's Jesus sending out his faithful followers, his disciples,

into a world that will reject them.

And not just reject them, but like a wolf will devour them, it

will persecute them, it will chase them out.

And is not the interesting thing of this passage what Jesus

says, if you are chased, then go, don't stay.

In fact, take the dust of that town and shake it off at them as

a sign to them of their hard hearts, of their rejection.

And so now we're beginning to see that this harvest field is a

dangerous place, even though it has good news and it is plentiful.

And there are hearts that will receive this message of the harvest.

There are those who will reject it, and they will reject it

vehemently because they will go after God's own people and reject

them, just as they will reject his one and only Son.

So this harvest field that Jesus is sending his people out into

is a place of danger, but it's also into a world that is in pain

and suffering.

It's not a perfect world.

It's not a world where we get everything we want all the time.

I wonder, are we awake to that?

I wonder, do we realize that that's what the world is like?

And as I've said so often this year, it's not what God intended.

It was never part of the original design that there would

be pain and suffering in the world.

But because of sin, yes, sin, this world is fallen.

It's broken, it hurts.

And it's a place where we want to weep and cry because we are sad.

See, this is a world that needs a change.

It's a world that is only going to continue to get worse and

worse because sin will bring it further and further down and away

from the one true God.

So this place of danger is also a place of pain and suffering,

but it's also a hostile world.

Yes, it will be hostile to the message.

It will reject what is truth.

In fact, it will make truth false, and it will make what is false

true.

It will be that dichotomy of mixing it up so that we will be led

to believe in this world today that actually what is bad, and you

see it Everywhere around you, in the changing of our laws, where

once we stood on a moral foundation, we're now told that that

good that we hold by is now bad, and we are bad for believing

it.

And rather we are to just follow whatever the latest social

thought is, because as long as the loudest voice goes with it, then

it must be true.

And that's what we're told.

And so this world, this harvest field, is a place of woes,

a place of danger, it's a world of pain and suffering, but

it's a hostile world.

And yet it is into this world that the good news of the gospel

comes, because it is the harvest field.

And a harvest field needs to be harvested.

You don't just leave your crops lying in the fields, you don't

leave them in your greenhouse, you don't leave them to rotate.

You harvest them because they're good.

And whenever you look at this summary of the world at Jesus time,

it isn't very different from our own.

We live in a time where the world wants to persuade us to its

self satisfying ways.

Rather than showing us the truth of the Savior, the world wants

to shape us into its mold.

And this is the way that will lead to our destruction.

You see, the world tells us that it will be our salvation, that

it can save us, but it's a promise that it cannot keep.

But there is hope in the midst of the hopeless world because Jesus

tells us that he is the Lord of the harvest.

Michael Wilcox, who is a commentator, says this about verse

two, the driving power of the Lord himself.

This is what it is.

The harvest is His.

The whole scheme is under his control.

And three times in as many verses, he takes the responsibility

for sending out the workers.

You see, the one who sees the spiritual harvest is the one who

reaps the harvest.

And this is good news for us because we have a caring Savior who

wants us to trust in him and in his way of salvation.

And so what is the link between these passages that we've

been looking at with relevance to the harvest from Exodus and now

from Luke's gospel?

Well, when you look at the command in the Old Testament to celebrate

the physical harvest and the image that Jesus now gives us in

the New Testament of the spiritual harvest, they're both pointing

us to complete dependence on God.

In the first, we depend on God as our provider and the giver of

life.

And this hasn't changed from the foundation of the world to this

day.

And as long as life remains on this earth, God will continue to

provide for our physical needs.

He will continue to provide the sun and rain, the seed, time

and harvest, the turning of spring into summer, summer into autumn,

autumn into winter, and he will ensure that that cycle continues.

And we can depend on God to meet all of our physical needs because

he has proved Himself faithful.

But now in these verses in the New Testament, we depend on God for

our salvation, because the images that Jesus uses shows us that

the things and ways of the world cannot be trusted.

They will mislead us, they will tell us lies, and they will

give us a false hope.

And so, instead of trusting in the world, Jesus invites us to trust

in him as the Lord of the harvest.

In Jesus there is perfect love and fullness of truth.

His love drives out fear and his truth continues to reveal the

fullness of God to us.

You see, the simple meaning of these passages for us today is that

each of us here need to put our trust in our Father God for our

daily provision, but also for our eternal salvation, salvation

that is only in His Son, Jesus Christ, to give his own life so that

we would not have to die.

And so we can sometimes look at all the things I mentioned at

the start that I love about the harvest and autumn, all of those

things around you.

But the harvest means that something has to die.

It has to be taken from its life source.

Any gardener will know.

And if they're a very good gardener, they'll get their tomatoes

from this year.

They'll take out the seeds and they'll dry them and they'll plant

them next year and so have another crop of tomatoes.

But that tomato has to die.

It has to be cut off from its life source.

And even though we will consume it quite quickly from that

point, it has to die so that from it we can get life.

And it's a wonderful illustration of what it means to

know Jesus.

He gave his life so that we could live, see in the harvest, know

the nutritional good that we receive in the crops gathered in.

But what about our eternal nutrition?

What about our eternal lives?

Jesus had to die so that we could live and dwell in the presence

of God forever.

This harvest time, I wonder, are you truly thankful?

Are you truly thankful for the fruit and the vegetables, for the

bread and for the tins of baked beans?

Because we celebrate the harvest to give thanks to God and

give him his rightful place as our Creator and as our sustainer.

But are you also thankful that he not only cares for our physical

needs, but also for our spiritual need of salvation?

You see, the truth is there is a harvest.

That's what Jesus says And the harvest is plentiful.

But as with everything of the harvest, there's going to be things

gathered in and there's going to be things left simply because

they haven't done what they're supposed to do by way of growing

as they should have.

And the reality for us all here, we're one of the other of this

harvest we are gathered in or we are left to face the punishment

that we deserve.

Now that's striking on a day of great celebration is this.

It is the truth that we cannot ignore, that in the great harvest

of souls there will be the redeemed who will enter into eternal

life.

But there will be those, those who like the villages Jesus spoke

about, who will reject what it means to know the good of this harvest

of Jesus.

And they will be content in in their own thinking.

They'll be content to say that they are right.

They will be content to believe that their arguments are

greater than that in scripture.

They're content to believe that they provide for everything

themselves.

And don't think one moment of the God who truly has provided.

That's going to be a sorrow filled harvest because it will not

be gathered in.

It will be left and face the punishment it deserves.

And maybe, sadly, that's you this morning, maybe I've described

you.

You think you're good enough.

But none of our own goodness will ever be good enough.

Because Jesus is the only one who is good.

And it is he who invites us to come to him and to find rest, to

follow his way of life rather than being misled by the world.

And that's why he says he in Matthew chapter 11 and verse 28:30.

Matthew 11 · chapter mention

Come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give

you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and

humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

This is what it means to trust in Jesus.

This is what it means to be gathered in as that spiritual harvest

that is plentiful, that we will enjoy his rest.

So will you come and find rest in him.

Whether you're in your teens or in your 90s or anywhere in between.

Will you come to him and find rest?

Whether you think you're good enough or no good at all, whether

you're wealthy or poor, educated or not employed, looking

for work or retired.

The invitation is for us all to come to Jesus, to rest in him,

to rely on him, to be our Savior and have the burden of saving

ourselves lifted from us as we look to the only Savior who can truly

forgive and receive us home.

I truly love the harvest.

I haven't milked a cow in years and I haven't killed a chicken

either.

But I enjoy digging the carrots, I enjoy taking the tomatoes,

I enjoy the apples and plums from the tree as a reminder of God's

goodness.

But it points me to his even greater goodness, that greater goodness

of salvation in Jesus for that great harvest of souls that will

come.

Will you be found amongst those that are gathered in to heaven

forever?

Or actually will you be left?

And you will have to suffer the punishment that your sins rightly

deserve because you have rejected Jesus once again.

He says to you this day, come to me, find rest for your weary soul.

Because who is he?

He is gentle and humble of heart.

Come onto Jesus and know his goodness this day and forevermore.

Let us pray.

Our Father God, we thank you that at this harvest time we don't

only have that opportunity to thank you for all that's around us,

but Lord, we thank you for Jesus, the one who will reap in his

harvest.

And so we pray that we will be found amongst it, that we will know

and have that wonderful assurance of sins forgiven.

Because a moment in life has led us to that recognition and realization.

And if it hasn't happened yet, Father, open our eyes.

May we not be like the villages in ancient Israel that rejected

this message, where the dust was shaken off against them and they

were left to face the punishment that their sins deserved.

Father, help us to know that even in the hostility of this world,

even in its danger, Lord, we can trust in a Savior who invites

us to rest in Him.

So may we know this to be our truth this day, and may we respond

well to Jesus as we ask it, in his name and his name alone.

Amen.