Worship: Serving God

Fields

“Field” is an extremely useful noun.

Literally, there are corn fields, hay fields, bean fields, and cotton fields back home. There are football fields, baseball fields with infields and outfields, and there are soccer fields. Tragically, the list of literal fields must include battlefields.

Figuratively, there are fields of study, fields of medicine, law, and science, fields of influence, mission fields and fields of personal interest. Ironically, all of these figurative fields can also be playing fields, fields of produce, and battlefields.

The Poet reports that in his day the enemies God had plans to steal, “The Fields of God.” This is still true and it is no limited strategy for the fields of God are wide and varied. God created human beings to be productive people with many fields to till and harvest.

Just What Is the Father’s Business?
Perhaps we have been too narrow in our understanding of God’s business, that business that sent the 12 year-old Jesus to the Temple to interview the priests. Some might say this, with the intention of shutting down the conversation, “The business of God is souls.” This is absolutely true beyond any “fear of successful contradiction” as a pastor I knew liked to say.

Do we really think “souls” is the sum total of God’s business? Does the Lord have just this one field?

Many years ago I did some teaching on ministry through the arts. I talked about bearing fruit in terms of creating beautiful works of art. Unknown to me, the pastor’s secretary was a painter. She had never connected her art to the concept of bearing fruit for God. “That was always just winning souls!” She told me. Her field of interest was painting and it was God’s field, too.

Dramatically, Jesus calls us to the harvest fields in these last days. Exactly which fields are they?

More than the traditional concepts of witnessing: going door-to-door, passing out tracts, presentational services and events, the Fields of God are where He has planted us! Our interests, our vocations and avocations, our callings and skills, our craftsmanship and creativity, our planting and harvesting, our hobbies and games, our arts and endeavors, our passions and our compassion—even our battles and competitions can be the Fields of God.

• Many have been successfully stolen by the enemy—let’s take them back.
• Others have been corrupted by sin—let’s reform them by the Book.
• Some fields have grown fallow and unused—let’s plow them up and plant them again.
• Dusty and dry, some of our own fields need a fresh rain—let’s ask the Lord to send rain.
• Here and there one of our fields may suffer from neglect—let’s pay attention and do the work!

Then, like the word, “field,” we can be extremely useful to God.

Scriptures:
Psalm 83
O God, do not be silent; do not keep still nor hold your peace, O God; For your enemies are in tumult, and those who hate you have lifted up their heads. They take secret counsel against your people and plot against those whom you protect. They have said, “Come, let us wipe them out from among the nations; let the name of Israel be remembered no more.” They have conspired together; they have made an alliance against you:… Who said, “Let us take for ourselves the fields of God as our possession. O my God, make them like whirling dust and like chaff before the wind; Like fire that burns down a forest, like the flame that sets mountains ablaze. Drive them with your tempest and terrify them with your storm; Cover their faces with shame, O Lord, that they may seek your Name. Let them be disgraced and terrified forever; let them be put to confusion and perish. Let them know that you, whose Name is Yahweh, you alone are the Most High over all the earth.

John 4:34-38 NIV
“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

Malachi 3:10-12 NIV
Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the LORD Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it. I will prevent pests from devouring your crops, and the vines in your fields will not cast their fruit,” says the LORD Almighty. “Then all the nations will call you blessed, for yours will be a delightful land,” says the LORD Almighty.

2 Corinthians 10:13 NIV
We, however, will not boast beyond proper limits, but will confine our boasting to the field God has assigned to us, a field that reaches even to you.

1 Corinthians 3:5-9 NIV
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe — as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow. The man who plants and the man who waters have one purpose, and each will be rewarded according to his own labor. 9 For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, God’s building.

Hosea 10:12 NIV
Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the LORD, until he comes and showers righteousness on you.

Song of Sowing and Reaping
The Call for Reapers
Text: James Oren Thompson

1.Far and near the fields are teeming
With waves of ripened grain;
Far and near their gold is gleaming
O’er the sunny slope and plain

Refrain:
Lord of harvest, send fir reapers!
Hear us, Lord, to Thee we cry.
Send them now the sheaves to gather.
Ere the harvest-time pass by.

2.Send them forth with morn’s first beaming;
Send them in the noontide’s glare;
When the sun’s last rays are gleaming,
Bid them gather everywhere.

Refrain

3.O thou whom the Lord is sending,
Gather now the sheaves if gold;
Heavenward then at evening wending.
Thou shalt come with joy untold.

Refrain

Semper Reformanda!
Stephen Phifer

© 2016 Stephen R. Phifer All Rights Reserved