Would you take your Bibles and turn with me, please, to John chapter 4, verses 7 through 42, will be our passage that we're gonna consider today. John chapter 4, verses 7 through 42. It's the story of Jesus' interaction with the Samaritan woman there at the well. Let me read this in your hearing.

A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, give me a drink, for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. Then the woman of Samaria said to him, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman? for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.

The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well and drank from it himself as well? as his sons and his livestock, Jesus answered and said to her, whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him will become in him a spring of water, a fountain of water, springing up into everlasting life. The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.

Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband, and come here. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, You have answered well, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and the one that you are now with is not your husband, in that you spoke truly.' The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, and you, Jews, say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the Father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.

But the hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, who is called Christ.

When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he. And at that point, his disciples came and they marveled that he talked with a woman, yet no one said, what do you seek? Or why are you talking with her?

The woman then left her water pot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, come and see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ? Then they went out of the city and came to him. In the meantime, his disciples urged him, saying, Rabbi, eat.

But he said to them, I have food to eat of which you do not know. There were the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him anything to eat? Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work. Do you not say there are still four months and then comes the harvest?

Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest. And he who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap for that for which you have not labored.

Others have labored, and you have entered into their labors. And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified, he told me all that I ever did. So the Samaritans had come to him. So when the Samaritans had come to him, They urged him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.

And many more believed because of his own word. Then they said to the woman, now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him, and we know that this indeed is the Christ, the Savior of the world. Amen.

Introduction

If you were with us in the Sunday school hour, you know that my Family and I served in the Far East for 20 years. And the place where we served for 18 years, we served in two countries. The first country we served for 18 years. And in the province in that country where we served, that country or that particular province, 80% of that province is mountainous.

And hardworking farmers for hundreds of years built terraces there on those mountainsides, as well as in those low-lying hills next to their villages. And there on those rice terraces, they have planted and watered and harvested rice, of all things. Oftentimes, when you plant rice, you want to plant it in the flattest field possible and flood those fields with water and let the rice grow. But these hardworking farmers have terraced these mountainsides so that they could plant rice, and they reap a harvest of rice in a very unlikely place.

And in our text today, we see Jesus and his disciples reaping a gospel harvest in a very unlikely place there in Samaria.

Three Points Introduced

So in this passage, we want to take a look at three things today.

Jesus Sows the Gospel

First, we want to see Jesus sowing the gospel. And then secondly, Jesus inspiring his disciples. And then thirdly, Jesus and his disciples reaping a gospel harvest in Samaria. So first off, verses seven through 30, Jesus sows the gospel.

Crossing Cultural and Ethnic Barriers

Notice that Jesus initiates a conversation with a woman of Samaria. We see here that Jesus was willing to go against cultural and ethnic taboos in order to minister to a soul. You see, in rabbinic tradition, it's strictly prohibited and told men not to speak with women in general. And John tells us that Jesus spoke alone to this woman there in Samaria.

And she being alone without other women, drawing water with her at that well probably indicated that she was well known in the community as a woman of ill repute, of immorality. For Jesus to speak to her alone was in his way of transcending his Jewish culture, which said that to do so would be in a way of inappropriately flirting with women. And so we have here the the record in verse 27, John writes, and at this point, his disciples came and they marveled that he talked with a woman. Yet no one said, what do you seek?

Or why are you speaking with her? To make matters worse, or to make matters even more socially and culturally awkward, not only was Jesus speaking with a Samaritan woman, but she was just that, a Samaritan woman. To understand how Jesus was seeking to transcend those cultural taboos, we need to remind ourselves of who the Samaritans were. In John 4, verse 9, John wrote, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

It captures the historic and racial animosity between the Jews and the Samaritans. The Samaritans lived in the area between the Sea of Galilee to the north and Jerusalem, right there in the middle. This animosity goes back to the exile of the northern tribes of Israel, as recorded in 2 Kings 17, verses 24 through 41. After the Assyrians conquered the northern tribes and took them captive, they backfilled with people that they had conquered before.

That is, they colonized Samaria with people from other lands that they had previously conquered. And they hired, according to 2 Corinthians 17, or 2 Kings 17, that they hired a Jewish priest to teach these colonists the Jewish religion. And they did this more out of superstition than they did from having a fear for Jehovah God. You see, in their thinking at that time, Assyria believed that these colonists, in order to prosper in this new colonized land, they, the colonists, needed to understand the God of this land. and to do rituals in order to have a prosperous harvest.

In missions, we call this mixing of biblical belief and practices with pagan stuff syncretism. And that's what was happening there in the area of Samaria. And so the Jews despised the Samaritans as not true ethnic and religious Israelites. That's the very root of this animosity between the Samaritans and the Jews.

And brothers and sisters, in this passage thus far, in verses 7 through 30, we need to see, in Jesus' example, a model for us in our evangelism and missions work. And what I'm going to be doing throughout the rest of this passage is looking at this story, this true story of Jesus' interaction with this Samaritan woman, and pulling out principles and applications for us in our church evangelism. cross-cultural work. And let me say also that I know that I'm preaching to the choir this morning. I know all of you are committed to the Lord Jesus Christ, not only in your families, not only in your personal walk with him, not only in your church, but you're committed to him to fulfill that great commission, to see the gospel spread throughout the world.

I'm a testimony of your commitment. 20 years you've prayed for me, my family, and our work there in the Far East. 20 years you've supported us, so I know in your hearts you're committed to evangelism and foreign missions, and so I'm preaching to the choir. And yet still, I believe from this passage we can strengthen our commitment to these things by the work of Christ in this passage. In our Evangelism and missions work, brothers and sisters. We have to be willing to cross cultural and ethnic boundaries as Jesus did.

When Jesus gave the church the Great Commission in Matthew 28, he said, make disciples of all the nations. And when he says all the nations, brothers and sisters, don't do what's easiest for us in our English translation on how to understand all nations. We think perhaps political. nation-states. That's what he means by nations, but it's not.

It's something more important. That phrase, all nations, doesn't mean nation-states, but it means all people groups, people of different ethnic, cultural, and linguistic organizations. Jesus wants his church to have their eyes, our eyes, on making disciples through the gospel of all the ethnically different peoples of the world. That's our mission.

That's the scope of our mission. Do we have that all people's mentality that Jesus wants us as a church to have? And again, I know I'm preaching to the choir and that you do have that desire. I've heard of your work, supporting, of course, not only heard about it, but experienced it, the work in the Far East.

I've heard of your work in Honduras and other things. So I know you're committed to these things. Let's grow in that commitment of making disciples of all the different people's groups. You know, the demographics of your country here and our country to the South, here in North America, it's changing.

You know that. It's changing rapidly. It's been changing for decades now. These demographics, really started to change in a big way in North America in the 1960s when immigration policies have picked up.

And one of the reasons for this phenomenal increase of people from different countries coming to North America is this worldwide increase in international migration. The former UN Secretary Kofi Annan said in 2006, quote, international migration is one of the greatest issues of this century. We have entered a new era of mobility." Now, how do we respond to such a fact as this great rise in international migration as Christians? How do we respond to that?

Do we see it as a danger to our way of life or what we're used to, or do we see it from a gospel lens as an opportunity to make disciples of all the nations? Missiologist Michael Pocock wrote, quote, according around, excuse me, around the world, Christians are waking up to the reality that the massive movement of peoples in migration presents an unprecedented opportunity for spreading the gospel, unquote. Scott Arbater, the president of World Relief, perhaps the largest evangelical organization reaching out to migrants, immigrants as well as refugees, has said this, quote, God is up to something dramatic. God is up to something dramatic.

The mass migration that now brings us into contact with people from every tribe, tongue, and nation is both a profound privilege and a daunting responsibility, unquote. How are we going to respond, brothers and sisters, with a nation, now the nation's at our doorstep. People groups, people of different ethnic, linguistic, cultural makeups, right at our doorstep. You know, just last night, my family, my wife and I had the opportunity to see some old missionary colleagues who live right here in Abbotsford.

We didn't know that until just a few days before arriving here. They served with us there in that country, in the Far East where we were at for 18 years. And so we spent the evening with them. And in their little complex, we met people from East India.

We met a guy from China. And we even met a guy just knocked on their door, a friend that they're trying to build friendship with. He's a refugee from Afghanistan. He was evacuated by the people there in the US because he had helped them in the Afghan war 15 years and his life and the life of his people were threatened his family were threatened and so they've evacuated him and he's now here in Abbotsford or there in Abbotsford, but people from every walk of life are around us from every nation of the world It's the same where we're from from San Francisco Bay Area.

It's a melting pot. It's a a display, a sample of people from every nation, from Europe, European nations, as well as nations from other parts of the world, Asia particularly. And how are we going to respond to this as Christians? I trust we will respond to it as an incredible privilege, a responsibility, a wonderful, unprecedented opportunity for gospel sharing.

Perhaps brothers or friends that are here today, because I'm a visitor here. I don't know many of you here by name and personally. Perhaps you're here today, and you feel like this woman in our passage here. You feel like a Samaritan.

You feel like an outcast from your social circle. Perhaps you even feel like a Samaritan, an outcast from churches that you visited. I hope not this church, and I trust not this church, but you feel welcomed here. but in your heart and other places you feel like a Samaritan. And to you, my unbelieving friend, I want you to see something about the Savior of the world, Jesus, and how he deals with outsiders.

You see how tender, my friend, Jesus is dealing with outsiders? You see how patient he is in working with her soul, she was full of immorality and sin, and yet he was engaging her. He was willing to cross cultural and ethnic boundaries to speak and to minister to her soul. And my friend, if you're here today and you're feeling, I don't know if Christianity's for me, I feel like an outcast, know that the head of Christianity, the king of the church, Jesus Christ, and his people, by his grace, want to be compassionate to your soul and meet your deepest need through Jesus and his gospel.

I want you to see Jesus in this passage, my friend, as one, a savior who's fit for your soul. You can come to him today and know that you won't be rejected. If you repent of your sins and confess your sins and trust in him, he's not going to reject you. And you will taste and see that the Lord is good to your soul.

Come today, my friend. But let's go on in the passage here and see what else we can see the Lord doing with the Samaritan woman. Jesus was willing, as I mentioned before, to cross all these cultural and ethnic traditions in order to sow the seed of the gospel into the heart of a Samaritan woman. It's this gospel seed about himself, Jesus, Messiah, the Christ that he's seeking to implant into her heart.

And he's seeking patiently to take her along in the conversation to get to the point where he can speak very clearly about his person. That's his trajectory in this conversation.

Living Water and the Woman's Need

Look at verse 10, how he does that. Jesus, in verse 10, speaks about living water. You see, Jesus engages the woman with a topic that is very much upon her mind. What's the topic upon her mind?

Water, physical water. Yet it's obvious to us that Jesus, when he raises that phrase, living water, he's speaking not about physical water, but about spiritual water. We know if we were to spend time digging around in the Gospel of John, that that metaphor, living water, is used elsewhere, particularly in John 7, verse 38 and 39. And in the Gospel of John, Jesus uses this metaphor to mean the wonderful, abounding, overflowing life that the Spirit brings to a saved person's life. the abounding blessings that the Spirit of the living God, the Spirit of Jesus, brings to a saved person's life.

And yet the woman and her thinking is fixated on the horizontal, physical water. So when Jesus speaks about living water, she responds in verse 15, give me this water. Physical water is what's on her mind. She wants it for herself.

So she won't have to continue to come back to this well to draw out physical water. But we well know that Jesus was gently leading her in the conversation to think about her soul's deepest needs. And he was moving her mind ever so slowly from thinking about just horizontal concerns to the vertical concern about her relationship with the living God in heaven. Later in John 17, Verses 3, Jesus defines this everlasting life as the believers entering into an intimate relationship with God such that they might truly know him.

And here, too, in this element of this passage that we're considering, Jesus being willing to speak with her about the topic that she's interested, knowing that his trajectory is to take her into the gospel, we see something here for our evangelism and missions we're as well, brothers and sisters. We should tell those that we share the gospel with about the abundant relational blessings that come from becoming a disciple of Christ, the living water. When we come to Christ, The Spirit takes up residence in us. Think about that.

Some of us have thought about that for decades and know about that, and it trips off our tongues and off of our lips very easily. Oh, as a Christian, the Spirit lives within us. But think about the significance of that. This very Spirit, who brooded over the unformed world, the waters of chaos at the beginning of creation, and brought order to the universe is that self, same spirit, that now lives within us.

What an awesome blessing that is. And only Christians like you and me, not because of any merit in ourselves, but because of the grace of God, that spirit resides in us, living waters. The Spirit takes up residence in us, and the Spirit blesses us with a sense of peace with God. The Spirit brings us the joy that comes from being joined and in union with Jesus Christ.

The Spirit gives us liberty from our fear of the devil and evil spirits, which is, in the work that we used to do in the Far East with people of animistic traditions, seeing spirits in inanimate objects, they think they're very animate, and being tormented by spirits to know that when they become Christians, Christ can set them at liberty from the fear of the devil and evil spirits. This is a huge thing to them. He delivers us from the fear of death. The Spirit blesses us in so many other ways.

We could go on and on. And to you, my unbelieving friend, you can be like that Samaritan woman here in this section that we're considering. You can also be fixated on that horizontal concern about physical water, your physical water, your salary, making enough for your family. That's well and good.

Retirement, that's well and good. But my friend, life is more than just getting on in this world. It really is. You need to be responsible.

I need to be responsible to care for my family, to think about retirement, helping other people who are in need physically. Yes, we all do. But our greatest need and your greatest need, my friend, is to get right with God. What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and yet loses his soul, Jesus says.

My friend, in the gospel that you hear in this passage today, come to Christ. And then as we move on here,

Jesus Reveals Sin and the Need for Repentance

let's see in verses 16 through 18, Jesus is the revealer of hearts. Remember his interaction with the Samaritan woman. Jesus truly wants to lead this woman to drink of the springs of everlasting life. But in order to have this benefit, this woman to have this benefit, He needs to bring her sexual sins to light.

In order for her to have this living water of eternal life that springs up in her soul because of the Spirit living in her, she must be brought to a point where she would confess and turn from our sins. And here, too, brothers and sisters, in our evangelism and our missions work, we too need to bring up the matter of sin and not to be backwards about it. Yes, we need to be tactful, but we need to tell the bad news to those that we're addressing, whether here in North America or on the other side of the world, before we can really give them the good news and before they can really appreciate the good news. They've got to hear that bad news first about them being legally guilty before God.

You know, Paul, in his explanation of the meaning of the cross as an atonement for sin, he's using, and he's talking about justification that happens through the work of Christ upon the cross, the propitiation there, and when we look to Christ and believe we are justified because of Christ's work on the cross. Those are all legal terms, and we need to preach that here in North America and across the world, because it's in the Bible. That's one way of understanding the cross. And yet Paul, when he looks at the cross, he sees it as a multifaceted diamond, as it were.

And one angle is that legal aspect that we need to communicate to people. But he also sees it, the cross, as the apex, the crucial point of reconciliation. That's relational language. Reconciliation between a person who has been offended, God in heaven, and the sinner.

And so in some cultures, we need to help them to understand the legal aspects. Like people that we worked with in the Far East, they're not so much forensically or legally inclined to think. their cultures are oftentimes very collectivistic and relationally based. And so we found ourselves, when we were presenting the gospel to them, to talk, of course, about propitiation, and Christ dying as a substitute upon the cross, and Him propitiating the wrath of God because of the sins of the people that He was dying for. We speak about that, but we oftentimes would make sure that we talk about the relational aspect of the gospel, a reconciliation with God, and we would bring them to passages like Christ's parable of the prodigal son, and how that's so relationally based, and immediately they understand the crux of the gospel.

We've offended the heavenly Father, and we're like that youngest son. We've brought shame and dishonor to God as children of God, as creations of God, and we need to be reconciled to Him. And so in our cross-cultural work in evangelism, we need to know that when we're dealing and sharing Christ with people, we need to bring up sin, and we need to be aware of how they're perceiving our conversation, and trust in the Holy Spirit to open their hearts, and use the means that we have, with the example of Paul, to share the gospel in different ways to them with the hope that God would open up their hearts. And my friend, if you're here today and not a disciple or a follower of Jesus Christ, then know that you're still in your sin's guilt before God.

You still have the shame of your guilt upon you. But the good news is that Jesus and his work upon the cross If you but repent of your sin and look to Him, that work upon the cross will be applied to you, and the guilt of your sins He will bear. The shame of your sins and the punishment they deserve was upon Him 2,000 years ago, and you will be washed clean, and you will be put in a right relationship with the living God of heaven. That's for you today, if you but look to Jesus and live.

And then as we move on in the text here,

Jesus Restores True Worship

look at verses 19 through 24 again. And we see Jesus here as the restorer of true worship. You see, the Samaritans and this Samaritan woman's problem with worship is with the proper place of worship. She is asking, Jesus, where's the proper place of worship?

Here in Samaria, we're down there in Jerusalem. But Jesus, as he often does, transcends her thinking. He says she's asking the wrong question. It's not a question of the proper place of worship, but a question of the proper condition and the content of worship.

True worship consists, he says, of spirit and in truth. And if we were to unpack and dig around again in the Gospel of John, we would see that spirit means true worshipers, who are people who are born again by the Spirit of the living God. And truth that he's talking about here is true worship is focused on Jesus Christ, who is the truth, as he says in John 14 6. And here, too, we have something for our evangelism and missions work.

We need to be helping and engaged in planting churches not only here in our country, here in North America, but across the world, that are churches that are focused on having regenerate believers in their midst as members of their church. And that the worship of these churches that we're planting, the focus of their worship is not upon man, or a program, or our activities in the church. As good as those things may be, but it's upon Jesus Christ as the focus of our worship, the truth and the life. And then

Jesus Declares His Messianic Identity

in verses 25 and 26, Jesus gets to the point that he'd been aiming for in his conversation with the Samaritan woman. He speaks about his identity. He's the Christ. And the woman seems to pick up on Jesus' meaning when he talked about truth in worship and how it It's a pointer to Messiah and Christ.

And she seems to know that he was talking about Messiah or Christ, and so she begins to speak to him about Messiah, the Christ. And think about the shift that's taken place in the conversation. She was talking at one point just about physical water, and Jesus has patiently taken her to a point now that she's thinking about Christ and Messiah. Jesus has succeeded in bringing her focus away from physical water and away from the controversy about the place of worship.

He brings her now to the focus, to where her focus, to where he's always wanted it to be, upon him and his person. He's the Messiah. He's the Christ. He's the long-expected Savior of the world.

And brothers and sisters, in our evangelism, in our missions work, we too need to contextualize our approach. And what I mean by contextualize here is taking the biblical contents of the gospel message, not changing the core aspect of the gospel, but contextualization is not changing the core of the gospel, but it's packaging it in such a way that it increases, by God's blessing, the transmission of truth of that gospel to that person of another culture. And we see Christ here doing that very thing. Jesus contextualized his message to the Samaritan woman.

He contextualized it by discussing a topic that greatly interested her. Cool, fresh water. He spoke in a way that she could understand, and then he moved her to spiritual things, and he moved her from speaking about water to the core of the gospel himself. And we, too, by God's help, need to do that.

Contextualizing starts, of course, with the core of the gospel and knowing that firm and clear in our minds. And then contextualizing also means we need to understand something about that person from another culture and their culture, their history a little bit, their language, perhaps, even. You know, for the first three and a half years in the Far East, in that first country that we were in, strapped on a backpack, And at 38, I became a university student again. And I learned how to, as it were, say my ABCs in a different language.

And it was humbling. I felt so incompetent at 38. I felt like I was back in kindergarten. Language-wise, I was.

But it was with an aim, so that one day I could communicate in their mother tongue the gospel to them. And though I'm not advising that you necessarily have to master another language to reach people of different, cultural and ethnic origins in your area, but maybe some of you will, but at least know something about maybe their worldview. Something that will help you to package the gospel in a way, by God's help, will communicate that gospel more clearly to them. We see Jesus doing that here.

We see Paul doing that, don't we? In Acts 17, when he spoke in terms that those philosophers in Athens could understand. And so we, too, need to learn about these various people groups around us and here in our own communities. And this will help us better contextualize the gospel message to them.

And may God help us in that. And in our evangelism and our missions work, we must keep Jesus as the focus of our message. We need to keep Jesus as the focus of our message and act 1 verse 8, you recall what Jesus said to his disciples then. Jesus sent his disciples out on mission with these words, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

Jesus calls the church to be witnesses of him and to him. We are to tell people about Jesus' birth and his life and his teaching, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, and one day his coming again. Our witness to them needs to be filled with truth about Jesus. And then hastening on in verses 37 through 30, notice the response of the men in the village.

They heard and they all started to march over to Jesus. Keep that in mind. We're gonna come back to that in just a little bit. They heard the testimony of the Samaritan woman who had come back and talked to them and summarized her encounter with Jesus and said that, could this be the Christ?

And the men of the village, John writes, all left and went out to Jesus and his disciples and where they were. Keep that in mind. And so the first point then has been, Jesus sows the gospel.

Jesus Inspires His Disciples

Second and more quickly, Jesus inspires his disciples, verses 31 and 38. The disciples are fixated on the horizontal here in this part of our passage. In verse 8, look again please. We are told that the disciples left Jesus for a time to buy food for the team.

They have been thinking horizontally about concerns such as food and drink. And they've been doing their duty to care for Jesus and for the team. They're doing well. They should be doing that.

And then in verse 27, the disciples re-enter the scene, and when they re-enter, remember that they've been thinking for several hours horizontally about food and drink. And they bring back food and tell Jesus to eat something, and when Jesus replies, I have food to eat, of which you do not know, they almost comically respond, Huh? Did someone give him something to eat earlier? And we see that their thinking is just on the horizontal at that point.

And then Jesus goes on to display or to explain to them his meaning of food. It's the spiritual food of doing the redemptive work that the Spirit of the Father has sent him to do. And brothers and sisters, aren't we sometimes like the disciples here in this portion of the passage? Sometimes we can be so fixated on our horizontal duties, maybe too fixated on our horizontal duties, that we forget the gospel calling that Christ has given to His Church of making disciples of all the nations.

And we too need the help of Jesus to bring us back to remember that spiritual food of doing the work of the Father, of extending His kingdom throughout the world. and to the hearts of people all around us. We see Jesus in his teaching and other parts of the Gospels often doing this, doing this, reorienting, reorienting, excuse me, reorienting his disciples. We see that in Luke 10. Martha, Martha, you're worried and troubled about so many things, while her sister was at the feet of Jesus, listening to Jesus' teachings.

And then we have, in this portion of the passage, the disciples here are urged to have a higher kingdom aspiration.

Lift Up Your Eyes to the Harvest

Jesus says to his horizontally focused disciples in verse 35, lift up your eyes and look at the fields for they are already white for harvest. Lift up your eyes and look at the fields They're already white for harvest. The disciples were about to enter into a spiritual harvest right there in Samaria, in an unlikely place. It was a place that the disciples themselves had never sown any gospel seeds.

The Old Testament prophets sowed gospel seed in Samaria centuries before. John the Baptist worked that area of the world. there in Samaria and sowed gospel seed. And Jesus now was sowing gospel seed here in the story that we're considering this morning. And now the disciples were going to have the privilege of reaping a gospel harvest.

And Jesus said to them, lift up your eyes. I think Jesus wanted them literally to do that because in verse 30, do you recall what was said in verse 30, we're told that the men of the city were marching out to the place where Jesus and his disciples were located, outside of that Samaritan village. You know, our son, I mentioned to you, who were in the Sunday school hour, I said that he is a cinematography student at Biola University, finished his first year, and he's often telling us and sharing the things that he's learning that Christian Cinematography College, and I often think, when I think about this passage here, what it would be like to have shot, if we were to do a film, to shoot it this way, that Jesus is facing that Samaritan village, and his disciples are in front of him, they're facing him, and Jesus sees the horde of men coming out of that village, and they're kicking up dust, And he says to his disciples who were facing him and not the people, he says, lift up your eyes. The harvest is coming.

Stop thinking horizontally. Here comes the harvest. And they turn around and they look. That's how I would have, if I did a film, I would have shot it.

If my son shoots that film, I'll try to give him that idea, but I don't know if he'll take it. But Jesus is getting his disciples ready for the harvest. And these are the very words, brothers and sisters, of our Lord that I want to have ringing in our ears today. Lift up our eyes to the fields, for they are already white for harvest.

Do Jesus' words grip us, or are they like disciples, or are we like disciples, so preoccupied sometimes with the horizontal concerns of life? What harvest of souls is right before our eyes? And Jesus is saying to you and to me, lift up your eyes. Are they immigrants?

Are they international students? They don't need to be people necessarily, of course, of other cultures, but because of this great international migration, our demographics are changing ever so quickly. We must not neglect them. Sure, we need to reach our neighbors who are same.

We have that same cultural tie with them. Yes, they need the gospel too, but let's remember those of other nations that are coming in in our midst. And then

Jesus and His Disciples Reap a Harvest

we want to look at the third point here. We've already taken a look at Jesus who sows the gospel seed here in this passage, and Jesus who is inspiring his disciples, and third and finally, Jesus and his disciples reap a spiritual harvest. Verses 39 and 42.

A Harvest Among the Samaritans

The despised mixed-blood Jewish and Gentile Samaritans are coming to Christ at the end of our passage. Imagine yourself, brothers and sisters, there at that scene. All these former enemies, these despised Samaritans, before your very eyes, God is awakening their dead souls and they're giving themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. God is implanting into them new life and they have saving faith and they're looking to Jesus as their Messiah.

And you hear them saying, now we believe, not because of what you said, For we ourselves have heard Him, and we know that this indeed is the Christ, the Savior of the world." What an incredible opportunity, what an incredible scene that must have been to experience these enemies of the Jews, the Samaritans, this unlikely harvest being reaped right there in Samaria. Jesus is reaping a harvest, and His disciples, wonderful harvest of souls in a very unlikely place. In our hearts, brothers and sisters, who are the Samaritans in our lives that Jesus wants to reach and reap a harvest from, but we're not quite reaching? Are they people of a certain place?

People of a certain social class? People of a certain ethnicity? Could God be reaping a harvest of souls to Jesus among our Samaritans? And he wants us to be a part of it, just like these early disciples were a part of reaping that harvest in the literal Samaria.

Application

Well, we've taken a look at three points today. Jesus sows the gospel, Jesus inspires his disciples, and Jesus reaps a harvest. It's no coincidence, brothers and sisters, that Jesus has his disciples with him to witness and experience this harvest of souls among the Samaritans. Jesus is getting them prepared, I believe, because the church was, in just a few years, about to enter into a worldwide cross-cultural mission of making disciples of all the nations.

And this is their first taste, they themselves, of realizing that God is going beyond the bounds of ethnic Jews to save souls. He's going to the Samaritans of all places. Christ is giving them missionary training right here. And later in a few years, Jesus would tell them more clearly of his gospel mission when he said to them in Acts 1 verse 8, but you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth.

May our hearts look to always pardon with Jesus in reaching people from all over the world. Amen. Let's close in a word of prayer.

Closing Prayer

Our gracious Heavenly Father, we thank you for sending your son, the Lord Jesus, that prototype missionary who left the perfection of heaven and took on flesh and came here and lived the life that we should have lived and died a death that we should have died upon the cross. And now entrusts and empowers us, his church, to carry on his mission in the world and to partner with him. to make disciples of all the nations. Continue to bless the dear brothers and sisters here at Free Grace in doing that very thing, the thing that they're committed to. Empower them to bring gospel blessing to the world.

In the end, you would receive glory and honor. And we pray this in Jesus' name, amen. We can take your hymn books and turn to 568. We'll stand and sing the doxology in praise to our God. 568. ♪ Praise him, all creatures here below ♪ ♪ Praise him, all ye heav'nly host ♪ ♪ Praise God, the Son, and Holy Ghost ♪ The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Amen. Father, thank you for your word. Thank you for this wonderful exposition of Christ and the salvation of these Samaritans. We pray that your gospel would be proclaimed throughout the earth today, that you would save from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.

And we ask this through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Well, please be seated for a brief time of meditation.

Scripture References

• 2 Kings 17:24-41
• Matthew 28:19-20
• Luke 10:38-42
• John 4:7-42; 4:9; 4:30; 4:35; 4:39-42; 7:38-39; 14:6; 17:3
• Acts 1:8; 17:16-34