The Harvest Process
(Matthew 9:37-38 – BSB) – [37] Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. [38] Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest.”
(Also Luke 10:2)
This is a very familiar passage to us. However, I suspect that most of us don’t consider what Jesus is actually revealing here. I think we focus on the fact that the “harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few,” as well as His instruction to pray that God would “send out workers into His harvest.” However, I think we tend to overlook the significance of the fact that God is the “Lord of the harvest.” We can’t miss the meaning here, because what Jesus is telling us is that God, as the Lord of the harvest, has Sovereign control over who obtains salvation. Let’s take a closer look at this passage:
“Lord of the harvest” means that God is the Sovereign Ruler over the harvest of souls in the world. This does not refer to the planting and watering of the gospel seeds, but of the growth of those seeds. Yes, God is Ruler over the whole process, where God assigns workers to plant and water the gospel of Christ among the unsaved. But here Jesus focuses on the harvest, or the results of the planting and watering.
Harvest is the time the farmer goes out and gathers all the ripe crops, the crops that have completed the whole growth process. This process is the planting, watering and the growing of the crops to full maturity. This is highly significant because it aids in our understanding of the process of election and salvation of sinners. Consider what the Apostle Paul says about this process:
(1 Corinthians 3:5-7 – NET) – [5] What is Apollos, really? Or what is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, and each of us in the ministry the Lord gave us. [6] I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused it to grow. [7] So neither the one who plants counts for anything, nor the one who waters, but God who causes the growth.
Paul tells us that even in our faithfulness to plant and water the seeds of the gospel among the lost, we are nothing as it relates to the outcome. The outcome refers to the salvation of those whose hearts the Lord of the harvest had planted those seeds, for it is God alone who makes the gospel seeds within a person’s heart to produce salvation.
God sends out His people to plant and water the seeds of the gospel of Jesus Christ among the lost of the world (Ro 10:15). But it’s God alone who is in control of what happens after that, just as it is in the plating and water of the farmer’s crops. Once the crops have been planted and watered, it’s then completely up to God to cause the growth of those crops. The farmer just sits back and watches it grow.
Likewise, once we’ve done our part to spread the gospel among those who need Jesus, it’s then completely up to God to cause the growth, which refers to the ripe crops of salvation. Thus, the harvest Jesus refers to is the harvest of those who receive salvation through faith in Him, as the Savior of the world.
It’s only by the grace of God that any crop produces fruit. Likewise, it’s only by the grace of God that any of the seeds of the gospel produces the fruit of salvation. The farmer who plants and waters has nothing to do with what happens to his crops after that. He is completely helpless to cause the growth. He relies totally on the grace of God to bless his crops. Furthermore, the crops themselves have nothing to do with what happens to them. Likewise, the lost sinner has nothing to do with the outcome of the gospel seeds that have been planted in their hearts. It’s God alone, by the grace of God alone, which produces salvation within one’s soul. Salvation is completely a gift of God’s grace.
This whole salvation process (harvest) reveals unconditional Sovereign Election (Sovereign grace election), where God elects certain people for salvation, gets the gospel message to them, draws them, calls them, and bestows upon them the gift of faith—the enabling grace to believe in His Son as their Savior (Eph 2:8; Jn 6:64-65; Jn 10:26-27).
