Harvesting Souls
He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.Psalm 126:5-6
We ought to tarry long on this verse and plumb the depths of it’s meaning. It’s message clearly ties together brokenness and fruitfulness, weeping and reaping. Although it’s terminology is agrarian and not theological, it is the exact same terminology Jesus used in his parables about evangelism. And since interpreting this verse in a strictly agricultural way makes absolutely no sense, I will interpret it using the parable of the sower as a cheat-sheet of sorts.
Jesus referred to the word as “seed” and and evangelism as “sowing seed”, so interpreting it through Christ’s teachings the message would go something like this: ” He who goes out weeping. bearing the word for evangelism, shall come home bringing many people with him.” When you interpret this verse through Christ’s lens you draw a strong and immediate conclusion, a bountiful harvest of souls is the fruit of a weeping evangelist. A fruitful harvest requires a grief-stricken messenger. Unless the man is broken the fruit will be nonexistent or sparse. Leonard Ravenhill put it this way “It takes a broken man to break men.”
The necessity of brokenness for fruitfulness should surprise none of us. Jesus mission on earth was to come and be broken in our place, so that we could be saved. The prophet Isaiah described Christ’s ministry this way “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. 1 Jesus mission on earth could never have been completed without his being broken for us; why would we think we could successfully spread his message by any other means?
1: Isaiah 53:5
