Harvest Is Bigger. God Does More.

Today is our Harvest Thanksgiving service. It’s a time to thank God for the harvest. But what exactly are we thanking God for?

I want to do two things today. The first thing is to encourage us to see harvest as something bigger than what the combine harvester picks up. The second thing is to encourage us to see just how much God is involved in our harvest.

HARVEST IS BIGGER

We traditionally think of harvest as being about food. But I believe we should expand the concept and think of harvest as any products that come from the work of our hands.

Let’s go back three or more thousand years. Led by Moses, the people of Israel left Egypt where they had been slaves and travelled to Canaan. Somewhere in the desert along the way, God commanded the Israelites to hold two feasts in connection with harvest. He said,

‘You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, of the firstfruits of your labour, 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 field the fruit of your labour’ [Exodus 23:16].

Notice what God said through Moses. ‘You shall keep the Feast of Harvest, OF THE FIRSTFRUITS OF YOUR LABOUR, OF WHAT YOU SOW IN THE FIELD.’ Three thousand years ago, work meant agriculture. The firstfruits of the people’s labour was synonymous with what they sowed in the field.

In Jesus’ time, many people still worked in food production. Jesus told parables about the sower, the vineyard, the shepherd. Four of his disciples were fishermen.

But today very few of us are involved in agriculture or food production. Agriculture makes up less than 1% of the UK economy. Today we work in supermarkets, in hospitals, in schools, in sales and marketing, in restaurants and so on. Most people in the UK work in the service sector. We don’t produce food. In fact, most of us don’t produce anything tangible at all! Does that mean that harvest festival only applies to 1% of what we do? Shouldn’t we see God’s hand in the other 99% of what we do?

For most of us, the fruit of our labour is not what we sow in the field. If we only thank God for what we sow in the field, it won’t take long! We need to expand our idea of harvest and see the fruit of our labour as children we’ve taught, customers we’ve served, grandchildren we’ve looked after. As our labour in these areas produces fruit, we thank God.

HOW MUCH GOD IS INVOLVED IN OUR HARVEST

The second point is to see how much God is involved in our harvest.

I’m going to take food as the example. But please remember that we are trying to expand our view of harvest. What has God to do with the food on our tables? Why should we thank him?

First, God created the plants we eat – and also the animals, assuming we’re not vegetarian. We know that. It’s in Genesis 1. This is straightforward.

Second, God assigned certain plants to humankind to eat. Let’s look at this. God tells the people he has created:

‘Behold, I HAVE GIVEN YOU every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food’ [Genesis 1:29].

Imagine there’s a great restaurant round the corner. It has a range of delicious food on its menu. We’re happy to have such a great restaurant on our doorstep. But the situation with God is much better. God has created a world full of great things to eat – just like the restaurant. But where God is much better than the restaurant is that he selected some food – food he knows that’s just right for us – and he’s GIVEN it to us. God looked out for humankind from the moment he created us.

Third, God is still at work now. He didn’t stop working in the natural world when he’d finished creating. We can see this in something Jesus said. He said that God ‘makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust’ [Matthew 5:45]. When God created the world there were no evil or unjust people in it. So, if God sends rain on the just and on the unjust then he’s doing that AFTER his work of creation. It means that he’s working in the natural world now – and clearly, working to bless.

There are several other passages which tell us this. Psalm 104:10 says, ‘You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills…’ Psalm 65:9 says ‘You visit the earth and water it; you greatly enrich it’.