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