YEar 2 Day 100

Year 2 Day 100

Pray (ACts)

Read - Mark 4:26-29 - Revelation 14:14–19

Message - Alan Burke
Harvest is some way off, truth be told it’s something that for most of us goes unnoticed, that is unless were stuck behind a combine going through Saintfield and it’s a car park, were in a rush and the red mist is descending. The importance of the harvest cannot be understated, think about it, that loaf of bead in the kitchen it’s dependant on a harvest, protein levels in that grain when it’s harvested need to be 13% for it to be made into bread otherwise it is made into animal feed. That bottle of oil that we use for cooking is also dependant on a harvest as well for today we rely less on animal fats for cooking and more on oils like rapeseed, sunflower etc. 

Well on Monday we were thinking of the seed, or rather the word. It was the sower who scattered the seed and the seed does what the seed does it grows. Likewise it is our task to to scatter the word, to tell people about Jesus, to scatter the seed and by the work of God that word will grow. God uses that word and it works in our lives as the Holy Spirit applies it to us. It is the same word that works in us when we go home, works in us when we sleep, it is the word of God that works. Here in this parable the result of the seed that is sown on the soil, is that there is a harvest. When the harvest is ready, when the kernel is ripe the farmer puts the stickle to it. As the parable turns to the harvest the emphasis moves on the word that has worked to the harvest, the harvest is the final act. 

These kingdom parables are untimely about Jesus himself and the word that went out from him, we are called to do the same to take the word out but here the harvest is something in the here and now rather it speaks of Jesus in the final judgment. That is the harvest in view here, the coming judgment of the world, for the concluding words of verse 29 reflect the Hebrew text of Joel 3:13 and point forward to Revelation 14:14–19 as the kingdom grows it will lead to both a harvest and judgment, for this is what the word of God will produce, a harvest but also the coming judgement of the word. 

In Revelation 14 All the grain will be gathered by Jesus himself, the grain speaking of all those who believe but there is also there the gathering of a different harvest, that speaks of the gathered the grape harvest of the earth that will be thrown it into the great winepress of the wrath of God, speaking of the bloody destruction of the wicked (Matt 13:30). God will accomplish what he is to accomplish not us, we need to trust in the seed and leave the seed to do what it does in the soil, let us trust the word of God. We may not like waiting but we like the farmer need to leave the seed, we need to leave the word to do its work, it takes time but the word will do its work, what we need is patients, patients that God will bring about the growth and will result in a harvest of many Souls. 

Pray (acTS)

Sing

WSC 
Q102 What do we pray for in the second petition?
In the second petition, (which is, Thy kingdom come, (Matt. 6:10)) we pray, That Satan’ s kingdom may be destroyed; (Ps. 68:1,18) and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, (Rev. 12:10–11) ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; (2 Thess. 3:1, Rom. 10:1, John 17:9,20) and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened. (Rev. 22:20)
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