“The plowman shall overtake the reaper,
And the treader of grapes him who sows seed.” Amos 9:13
God loves to do the impossible. It is His way of silencing dissenters, removing doubt, and building faith in His people who are called to partner with Him in the impossible. When the impossible thing He is doing is regarding the harvest, my heart leaps like a calf from the stall when I consider it.
I remember talking with a Korean missionary couple in Tibet many years ago. When speaking of the enormous challenges in reaching Tibetans with the gospel, I will never forget the simple yet profound words he spoke to me: “Brother, when I was young there was open hostility towards the gospel throughout Korea. But look at Korea today. Crosses light up the skies of the city at night! If God could do it in Korea, He can do it in Tibet.” So true!
In reality, China is another case in point. 37 years ago at the close of the Cultural Revolution, all church doors were closed, Bibles and Christian materials had been burned in pyres all over the country, pastors, evangelists, and Bible teachers had been either martyred or cast into prison indefinitely, and the entire nation had been brainwashed into believing Communism like a religion with Chairman Mao as their savior. Now, according to the US State Department, Christianity is now the number one religious belief in China. Yes, more Christians than Buddhists. Our God is a God of the impossible.
There are things which we do to prepare for harvest. We buy tools and equipment, we build barns, we open markets, we arrange transport, and we forge relationships. There is a need for money, of course, and all would be in vain if there is no laborers. We till the ground. We sow the seed. We call in the recruits and mobilize the laborers. We plan and we pray. And we wait.
“So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters,but God
who gives the increase.” 1 Cor 3:7
This is not an excuse not to prepare, to plant, or to water. It is just an acknowledgement that God is the only one who can cause our labors to have an effect. It is an acknowledgement that there are some aspects of the harvest for which no amount of planning, effort, money, or laborers has any affect. In the natural, there is the factor of weather, or insects, or disease. Spiritually, we may ask “is God shining on it”, or “has He brought the rain of the Spirit”, or “did we sow bad seed”? But when it is all said and done, the fact remains that when God decides it is time to bring a place or a people to harvest, our preparations, though not unimportant, seem of little consequence. He still uses us, and partners with us, but not because He needs to.
Today I read Jonah. God decided it was time to do something in Nineveh. He sought for a man with whom to partner in reaching the Ninevites. Jonah was found, a prophet, one who had spoken for God, one who had prophesied to one of Israel’s powerful kings (2 Kings 14:25). Even though Jonah did not prove to be such a faithful messenger, unwilling and uncaring as he was, God had decided it was time to do something powerful in Ninevah. So He did!
Humanly speaking, it is impossible to imagine that an entire pagan city of 120,000 people would repent and turn to God. But that is exactly what God did. From the greatest (the king even “covered himself in sackcloth and sat in ashes”) to the least of them, they all cried out to God.
Even here, Jonah had barely sowed the seed and a complete and ripened harvest was reaped. Similar accounts are referenced in the New Testament, the Samaritan woman’s whole village came to Christ. The town Tabitha was from turned to Christ en masse after Peter had raised her from the dead. And when Philip preached in Samaria with signs following, the city experienced a revival that the Bible describes as being “great joy in that city”. Each case was not preceded by anything we can really call much sowing, though undoubtedly Tabitha’s good works did a fair bit of watering of the soil in Joppa.
When God decides it is time for a people to come to Him, we get to go along for the ride. Sovereignly, he causes the mountains to “drip with sweet wine, and the hills [to] flow with it” Amos 9:13. When He determines the Tibetans are ready, I want to be there with a sickle in my hand, even if my swinging seems like a man trying to catch all the rain as it falls in his bucket. When He determines the Muslims here, or there, are ready, he will take the small offering we have prepared and like Elijah He will respond with so much fire that the offering, the wood, the water, and even the rocks are licked up by it. When He wants to move, the laws of physics, the element of time, things of natural consequence and effect, go out the window.
I can’t even conceive of what it means for the plowman to overtake the reaper! But I want to be there, to witness the God of the impossible moving in power, in compassion, and in majesty.
