Jeremiah 8:20

HARVEST PAST: SUMMER ENDED

‘The harvest is past, the summer is ended.’

Jeremiah 8:20

These words were first spoken of the ruined hopes and blighted fortunes of God’s people, Israel. Truly for that perverse and sinful generation the summer was ended. In the days of Jeremiah, the cup of their sorrow was full mixed; God delivered them into the adversary’s hand, and caused those round about them to lead them away captive. They were fast bound in misery and iron, and as they sat by the waters of Babylon they wept when they remembered Sion. When they remembered! Ah! well might they weep, since

‘It is truth the poet sings

That a sorrow’s crown of sorrow

Is remembering happier things.’

Israel thought of the pleasant land which they had despised, of the cedars of Lebanon, and the hills which stand round about Jerusalem, and now, in the black winter of their discontent, they mourned ‘the harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.’

I. Once more God has turned over a leaf in the Book of Nature, and found a text for us.—Just now all nature is saying to us, ‘the summer is ended.’ The plashing rain preaches from that text, the fierce winds proclaim it, the lightning writes it in fiery letters on the sky. The dying leaves lie like monuments bearing the epitaph, ‘the summer is ended.’ And now that the harvest is past, and the summer ended, and the fruit gathered, will you not think a little of yourselves, about the time that is past, about the harvest for which God looks, about the future of your souls?

II. There are various classes to whom the text applies.

(1) ‘The summer is ended,’ this is true of the old and feeble. It was summer-time with them once; how strong they were! The winter of age has sprinkled snow on the hair, and sent a chill frost into the bones, and frozen the current of the blood. For the old the summer is ended. But though the summer be ended for the body and the mind, though it be winter with the limbs, and the eyes, and the ears, and the brain, it need not be winter for the soul.

(2) For those, too, who have endured severe affliction the summer is ended. It is false and useless to say that we must not be sorry sometimes. We must not be sorry as those without hope, we must not despair, nor rail against God, nor neglect the work which He has given us to do; although our eyes be blinded with tears, we must pray for resignation: but we may be sorry. And for those who have lost their worldly property, whose savings have been swallowed up in bankruptcy when they are too old and infirm to retrieve their fortunes; for those families left destitute by the death of the bread-winner, and reduced from ease and comfort to poverty and dependence, for such as these also, ‘ the summer is ended.’

(3) But every one of these cases is but the type and parable of the deepest meaning of all. There are those who pass through life and neglect the opportunities of grace which lead to salvation, and for them at last a time shall come when it shall indeed be said with awful meaning, the summer is ended. The wise man tells us that ‘there is a time to get, and a time to lose.’ This is true of worldly matters. As with the things of daily life, so with the things of life eternal. There is a time to get a chance of repentance and amendment, a time to escape from the clutches of some bad habit or besetting sin; a time to get, and a time to lose. It is written in the Scriptures, ‘Behold, I set before you an open door’; and again it is written, ‘ The door was shut.’ There is a time when for all the door of opportunity stands open, and there is a time when it is fast closed. Shall not the gathered harvest remind you of God’s goodness to you and to all men, and warn you that the Lord of the harvest is looking for fruit from you, the fruit of a holy life, and the flowers of purity and meekness? Does not the end of another summer teach you that another season of opportunity is gone for ever, and that you are one year nearer the Great Harvest?

Brethren, we must sow for Eternity, if we expect to reap the harvest of eternal joy. For those of you who are doing this, striving after holiness, and letting your light shine before men, it is always summer—summer here, more perfect summer hereafter.

Illustration

(1) ‘Every person who still remains in sin may at the close of the year usefully adopt this lamentation. (2) A season of religious revival is also eminently a time of harvest, and such as lose this season may usefully adopt this lamentation. (3) Another situation to which this melancholy reflection is peculiarly liable is that of a dying sinner, for there is in this text: (i.) The acknowledgment of opportunity; (ii.) The confession of neglect; (iii.) The anticipation of doom.’