scripture
34 Then Jesus explained: "My nourishment comes from doing the will of God, who sent me, and from finishing his work. 35 You know the saying, 'Four months between planting and harvest.' But I say, wake up and look around. The fields are already ripe for harvest. 36 The harvesters are paid good wages, and the fruit they harvest is people brought to eternal life. What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike! 37 You know the saying, 'One plants and another harvests.' And it's true. 38 I sent you to harvest where you didn't plant; others had already done the work, and now you will get to gather the harvest."
observation
The harvest is appointed and looked for before it comes; so was the gospel.
Jesus and his disciples approached the Samaritan village, we can be sure that the disciples saw a despised people that they would walk a hundred miles to keep from going through their village, but Jesus looked at the village and saw a harvest that was ready and he was ready to go into the field and pick some of the fruit.
Harvest-time is busy time; all must be then at work.
Matthew 9:37 He said to his disciples, "The harvest is great, but the workers are few. 38 So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask him to send more workers into his fields."
Sometimes when you are working on a project you just don't feel hungry, Jesus was so busy harvesting that he couldn't think about eating lunch, he was looking at that Samaritan village and he was eager. He also knew that there were not any workers that were coming to this despised field. Notice the first person that he talks too, the person that would lead the rest of the village to the Lord, a woman that was probably an outsider and she too was looked down on by the people of her home town.
Harvest-time is a short time, and harvest-work must be done then, or not at all.
The time of the gospel is a season, it's a basic fact in farming that you cannot leave the fruit in the field for too long or else it will be gone. There seems to be fewer fields in America that are coming upon harvest season, there are more and more fields that are ripe unto harvest in countries like those on the African continent where great numbers are being saved at one presentation of the gospel. In some countries that I have been to the people came to Jesus in large numbers and in other places the soil was so full of rocks that it seems that no harvest will ever come up there.
What joy awaits both the planter and the harvester alike!
It isn't a competition, we are all working for the Lord.
application
Help us to see the "unlikeable" places and people of our day the way that Jesus would
prayer
Help me to look at the world and see the fields that are ready. I pray that on our mission trip to Tennessee that we will find a harvest that is ready but if not then we will kick the rocks out of the field and plant some seed and do some watering.
