18th October 2024

18th October 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Psalm 90 focus v5)


Message (Alan Burke)


As a wain I loved harvest time except when I was made to go to school and that I have Hayfever, I’m dosed with it. It was a time that everyone came together, it was all hands on deck, you helped the neighbours out, they helped you out and farms were a hive of activity to get that which was out in the field in the sheds and the barns before the weather changed. The oul timers were brought out of retirement and every tractor that could run was used, from the then modern John Deere 4055 to the Fordson Major and many in between. Things have changed hugely, long gone are the days the neighbours are called on, no longer are all the family able to be supported by the one farm, contractors are bought In with massive machines that do the same work in a fraction of the time with a fraction of the man power. Harvest reminds us of change.


The strong men before us, some from among us, who worked the ground and brought in the harvest as verse five confronts us have been swept away in the sleep of death. They were like the new grass of the morning, though in the morning they sprang up, by evening it is dry and withered. Each harvest confronts us with the change that has taken place, how we are mortal, life whether we want to accept it or not is really very short. Just as harvest reminds us of another year it confronts us again with the cycle of the seasons, the cycle of life, the seeds are planted, spring up from the ground, yield their fruit in their season and it is so shorts and beings again the next year. 


We are like the new grass in the morning, though in the morning it spreads up, by evening it is dry and withered. The morning and evening are metaphors, poetically used that confront us with the brevity. Grass just like all flesh that covers the dust of the earth returns to the dust from what it was made from, while it might spring up refreshed by the rain by evening it is gone, such fleeting thing is our life. Compared to God, his permanence we all return to dust (v3). 


None of us like being reminded of our own morality, one out of one of us will die, yet scripture reminds us repeatedly of this truth; Our… “days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and they come to an end without hope (Job 7:6), What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (Jas 4:14). …Each man’s life is but a breath (Ps 39:5), Our days are like the grass, we flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more (Ps 103:15–16).


The yearly harvest reminds us that we are more like the crops than we would like to think, the harvest has come through toil, while many of us escape the thorns and the thistles we work in order to pay for the food that we consume and the harvest might pass us by as we are oblivious to it all. Yet we eat our food until we return to the ground since form it we were taken and dust we are, and dust we will return. 
Let us not put our hope in the harvest but in the eternal home that we have in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, let us number our days for we are more like the crops than we like to think, we are finite, God is eternal, each harvest reminds us of change, we all return to dust so listen to wisdoms cry, number your days, not so you would be without hope but so that you would be driven to look to the only hope any of us have, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved (Acts 16:31).  The man who built his bigger barns had not numbered his days, what he prepared others received and he was lost for all eternity. Number each day rightly with wisdom, trust in the wisdom of God Jesus Christ. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q12. What special act of providence did God exercise toward man in the estate wherein he was created?
A. When God had created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience; forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death.
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