Fields White for Harvest

sermon transcript

Jesus’ Strategy to Change the World: Multiplication

Now, I was raised in the suburbs, and my father had a little garden out back of our house and we ate some of the fruits of his labor. But I’m not personally acquainted with harvest time, really. I kind of more read about it or see it in movies. But when I was studying in Louisville, I took a course one semester up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and I had to drive from Louisville to Grand Rapids and back. What a long drive that was, but it was a magnificent drive, went with one of the other students there, and we had a fantastic time, and I’ll never forget seeing for the first time the cornfields there in Indiana, seeing corn as far as the eye could see, just until the Earth curved, just seeing this bumper crop of corn.

And I started thinking back to when I was involved in our little harvest and went out and picked a few ears of corn, and I thought, how in the world do they get all that in before it goes rotten, how do they harvest it? And it shows how much I know, I’m a kind of a suburbanized person, that I didn’t really know what they do. And then I saw this huge combine one day, International Harvester, and there’s the farmer driving in air-conditioned comfort surrounded by modern technology and electronics and all, and it’s just doing a job on these fields, just sucking up the corn and all that, and I was… I couldn’t believe it, and I said, wow, miracle of modern technology.

So being the research-minded person that I am, I wanted to find out about these combines and harvesters and all that Cyrus McCormick invented in 1831. It was a rattly, clackety thing that was dragged by horses and, as a matter of fact, made so much noise that certain people had to walk alongside the horse and constantly comfort them. But it did the work of five men, and it was just revolutionary in agriculture. These machines are incredible, and the development from that to this air-conditioned combine that I’ve seen now is able… We can trace it out and see how human technology really has changed the way that farmers bring in a harvest and literally feeds millions today.

But what can be done out in a corn field or a field of wheat with machines can never be done in the harvest that we’re looking at today. There will never be a machine that can do this harvest, never. We are the harvesters, we are the ones who must bring them in, and they must be brought in one at a time. They must be brought in through the personal involvement of people like you and me. We will never go automated on this one, friends.

“Be Fruitful and Multiply”: A Physical AND Spiritual Principle

Now, I’m not saying that technology doesn’t have a place in church life or even in evangelism. I’m not saying that. We can broadcast the Word and we can get things out even through the internet, all that, that’s fine, but we must personally be involved in bringing folks in. “How will they hear unless someone preaches? And how will they preach unless they’re sent?” This is what God has ordained, and my delight and my desire is to be part of that harvest. Amen?

Don’t you want to be part of that? Don’t you want your life to count for eternity? Don’t you want to be involved in the harvest that Jesus is talking about here? Now, Jesus ordains multiplication still. Now, last week, we talked about biological multiplication, Sanctity of Human Life Sunday. We talked about how God said, blessed them. And said, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.” But I think that that same thing must happen spiritually.

I want to see our church multiply spiritually. I would love to be able to lead someone to Christ, who then leads someone else to Christ, who then leads a third generation to Christ and on. And you don’t have to wait 20-plus years for that, like you do with the biological reproduction. We could see it happen in an ever-escalating way, and I yearn for it, I pray for it, for this is what God has ordained. And this is how the church has grown over 20 centuries. How it began, 120 believers in the upper room waiting for the coming of the Holy Spirit, and it will end, Revelation 7:7, with a multitude greater than anyone could count from every tribe and language and people and nation standing around the throne.

Review: Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

How do we take that journey from 120 in an upper room to a multitude greater than anyone can count, millions and millions of people around the throne, except by this spiritual multiplication. This is what God has ordained, that we be fruitful and multiply. Now, the last time we looked at John 4, we saw Jesus interacting with just one person, the Samaritan woman. He is doing the will of His Father. He’s doing the work of His Father, and he is bringing in one soul into the kingdom. Is it worthwhile to Jesus? You better believe it is. And what works with one will work with tens of millions to the end of time. It’s the same pattern, but that one matters to Jesus and He’s reaching out for her.

But now in our text today, we see that He turns His attention to the disciples. And whereas with the woman, He’s working on a lost sinner, bringing her into the kingdom, now He’s turning to His disciples and trying to train them and prepare them to do that labor, that they would be spirit-filled harvesters for the kingdom, active in evangelism, fruitful in evangelism to the end of their lives. And it’s written down for us, by the inspiration of the spirit, so that we would do the same. We can come to John 4 and read, and we can be transformed. 

As Much Work to Do on Us as on the Lost

So I urge us today to just sit at the feet of the Master and learn from Him how to do this work, for that’s what he was doing with His disciples, He’s training them. I think we could say there’s as much work to be done on us as there was on the Samaritan woman, and as there was on the disciples in the first generation. So I say amen, Lord, do the work in us, work in us so that we can be active in this harvest.

The Disciples’ Feeble Start

Now, let’s start with the disciples and their feeble start. I don’t want to be hard on them at all. I think they’re in the text so many times to encourage us, right, as they just keep missing it a lot of times, they just don’t do what they need to do. And I think that’s the case here. They had a subtle, homely little mission, and it was laid out in verse 8. Go ahead and look at it. They went to buy lunch. Maybe you’ve been sent to buy lunch for a group before. They went to buy some lunch, verse 8. His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.

There it is, that’s the mission, all right? Jesus had different ideas for that trip. Look at verse 38, “I sent you to reap.” See that? Now, those two are not mutually exclusive. They’re not contradictory, they can fit beautifully together. They must fit beautifully together. There’s nothing wrong with going to buy food, but Jesus had a higher purpose for that homely mission. So often we go through life with blinders on: A trip to the grocery store is just a trip to the grocery store, and the other human beings there are the competition because they’re in the way with their carts and all that. And you can’t get to where you need to go, and then you come around and it’s time to check out, and there’s eight people in each line, and you had hoped to get through there twice as fast as you’re going to get through there.

They Go Buy Lunch, and That’s All They Did

We go through life with blinders on. We don’t see people the way Jesus would have seen them. A trip to work is just a trip to work, we’ve got projects to do, we’ve got a certain deadline, co-workers will either help you or hinder you in that project. That’s it, and that’s how we see them. We don’t see them the way Jesus saw Zacchaeus: “Come down, I must eat with you today, I’ve got some work to do on your soul.” We don’t see people that way, as we should, go through life with blinders on, we’ve got to get rid of those blinders. John 4 is just the text for us, because the disciples had them too, they went to buy some food and that’s it. But there was a higher work that Jesus sent them to be about, and so we face these wasted trips and wasted time.

Wasted Trips, Wasted Time

The disciples came back all excited. “Okay, let’s eat, I’m ready to go.” Verse 31: The disciples came and urged Him, “Rabbi, eat something.” That’s good, it really is. It’s surprisingly good for Samaritan food, actually. But He said to them: “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” And His disciples said to each other: “Could someone have brought Him food?” How are they different, at this moment, than the Samaritan woman who thought Jesus was just talking about physical water?

Lift Up Your Eyes and Your Mind

This is the way we are. We start with the physical, we’re thinking about our bodies and their ever constant demands on us. It’s hard to get our minds off the needs of our bodies. Now, there’s nothing wrong with holding down a job, there’s nothing wrong with providing and cooking food, there’s nothing wrong with mowing your lawn, there’s nothing wrong with getting your car repaired, there’s nothing wrong with going to a ball game, there’s nothing wrong with everyday life, nothing wrong with these things. And frankly, I believe the harvest happens while all that’s going on. If we get the blinders off, we can see it.

Nothing wrong with all that, and the disciples were providing not only their own needs, but Jesus’s too. There’s nothing wrong with looking after Jesus’s needs. That’s fine, but they had a hard time, as we do, seeing the eternally significant encounters that happen while all of that’s going on. We have a hard time, and so the text is calling us to lift up our eyes and our mind. The disciples are a bit of a failure here. But under the patient tutelage of the Master, what happens to them? They become world-changing apostles of Jesus Christ. World-changers, these men who have turned the world upside down are here now, speaking of Paul and Barnabas, but it’s true also of the apostles.

Jesus’ Powerful Lessons

Wouldn’t you love to turn the world upside down for Jesus, wouldn’t you love to be turned upside down yourself, so that we can accomplish it, achieve it? Jesus has the power through His spirit to do that to us. I want it done in my life. I’d love to have it done in this church, so let’s learn His lessons. And He’s got a number of them, some powerful lessons for His disciples. The first was just the power of example. Jesus taught them by example. When they came back from the Samaritan village with their food, what was Jesus doing? He was talking with the Samaritan woman. She was already in the kingdom by then, I think.

Lesson By Example

I think there was more to their conversation than what we have recorded here. John himself said the whole world couldn’t be filled with all the books that would be written, so there’s a lot more I’m sure they talked about, but I think she’s been brought into the kingdom or at least she’s very close. She says, “Could this be the Messiah?” Well, the disciples, they came back and they got a shock. Here is Jesus alone talking with a Samaritan woman. A Samaritan woman alone. I mean, what levels of shock are we going to get to here? This is very shocking to them.

Verse 27: Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find Him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” It didn’t matter, they’re going to get an answer anyway. They’re going to find out what He wanted, and they’re going to find out precisely why He was talking with her. He was of a mind to tell them, but they didn’t ask. So there He was, sitting and talking with a Samaritan woman. This was scandalous, and it would have been even more scandalous if they had known about her, what Jesus knew about her, it would have been even more scandalous.

But what is Jesus doing here? He’s doing many things, but one of the things He’s doing is He’s leading them by example. They are seeing Him bring a single lost sinner to faith in Christ. They’re watching Him do it. Luke 19:10: “For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” He was doing it right in front of them. They got to watch it. This is a challenge for me, you know the best leaders in history lead from the front, not from behind. And there’s many examples of this in military history. I was reading about Alexander the Great, who was a tremendously courageous man, in addition to being a great general.

And he was at the end of all of his conquests in India, and they were in a particularly tough spot against a very warlike tribe of Indians, and there was a citadel and his men were just like, “Let’s bypass it and move on,” but Alexander the Great was never of a mind to do that. And he was bothered by their weakness and laziness and cowardice, and after all those battles. So there were ladders laid up, siege ladders laid up against the wall, and he says, “I’m going,” and he went by himself up over the wall.

Well, three of his trusted soldiers went immediately with him, and Alexander gets to the top of the wall and jumps over into the courtyard below and just starts fighting. Wow. Well, the Greek army is shocked by this for a moment, and then they’d flood over the walls and they win. He, Alexander, it seemed, was mortally wounded by an arrow, but his armor saved him and he recovered within a week. As I look at that, and I bring it to this topic of evangelism, I realized that I, as a leader, as a senior pastor, I have to lead by example.

I can’t urge you all to be active in evangelism and not be active myself. Ministerial staff, we can’t do that. The deacons, the leaders, spiritual leaders in the church, we have to lead by example. Now, this work is for all of us, but the leaders need to lead by example, and nowhere is that clearer than Jesus. Jesus led by example in this matter, and when they came back, they found Him about his Father’s business, that’s what He was doing. He was doing the will of His Father.

I learned evangelism, personal evangelism, from example more than from training seminars. When I came to faith in Christ in college, my third year in college, I was trained by Campus Crusade for Christ and personal evangelism, and they did it by taking you places and doing it. That’s what they did. We would go down to Daytona Beach and we would witness on the beach, we’d go from blanket to blanket, and we got some good reactions and some bad ones. And all of it was instructive for me, it taught me, all of it, you know, how to have a good conversation and how to not have a good conversation and be gracious about it.

But we learn these things by example, we learn it by doing. Now, I’m not saying that there’s not a place for training, there is. I think it’s important, ’cause you get into a situation, you don’t know the answer, you don’t know what to say, and then there’s a time to talk it through, and Jesus did that with His disciples as well. Leading by example is vital, vital for me.

Lesson by Rebuke

I see secondly, that Jesus gives them a lesson by rebuke. Now, this may not be your favorite part of the sermon, but I think there are some times that we need to be rebuked for wrong activity, and it could even be a rebuke concerning a sin of omission, not a sin of commission. We tend to immediately think about things we’ve done that are wrong and want to confess those, but have we been as passionate about the harvest as Jesus would have us be?

Have we been as involved? Have we done the works God intended for us to work, and if not, we have to start by repenting and confessing sin. Now, there’s a rebuke in this passage for the disciples. It’s not easy to see, but it’s there. The rebuke is there concerning what they did while they were in the Samaritan village, and what they didn’t do. They came back with the food, but look what Jesus said. The disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” Verse 32, He said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Wow. And you put it together, He’s going to tell them in a minute what the food is to do the will of God, you apparently know nothing about that, that’s a rebuke.

How could it be that they knew nothing about that food? How could it be that we know nothing about that food? We have got to be faithful in this area, and so I think for us, it may be a start is to acknowledge, Lord, I seem to know nothing about your food. I seem to not be able to eat it. Jesus had called them to a higher mission. I sent you to reap what you have not labored for, but they hadn’t reaped a thing, they had failed to do anything concerning that higher mission.

And I think we need to start by accepting a rebuke and be willing to confess our sin and say, I want to be different. I want 2007 to be the most fruitful evangelistic year this church has had since I’ve been here. I would like each one of you to have the most fruitful year in evangelism you’ve ever had as Christians. But maybe we need to start by saying we have missed some great opportunities, just like the disciples did in the Samaritan village, we’ve missed some opportunities. We didn’t see them, we didn’t take advantage.

Lesson by Analogies: Food and Harvest

The third way He teaches them is by making analogies. We already touched on one of them, but He talks about food and harvest. He’s teaching by way of analogy. Jesus was great at this, taking everyday life things and just teaching out of that everyday life experience some spiritual principles. So they came back talking about food, Jesus talks about food, and He turns it around to talk about His mission in life. His mission in life was to do the will of the Father. Soul-saving work focused on lost people and saving them from hell. That was His focus.

And we see it again and again in Jesus’s statements. In John 6:38 and following: For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that He has given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Now, there’s a man who knew what He was about. He knew the will of the Father, and look what He says, My father’s will is, this is the will of Him who sent me. I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but to do the will of Him who sent me.

The will of the Father, the will of the Father, that was the focus of His life. And the clear display of this is Gethsemane, where Jesus, sweating, as it were, great drops of blood is down on His hands and knees and says, “Father, if you are willing, if it is your will, take this cup from me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” That was the clarion call of His whole life, was living for the will of God.

“My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of Him who sent me and to finish His work.” So he likens there the work of God the Father to food. Now, this may be your favorite part of the sermon. I mean, I like food, I think we all love it, so Jesus is using it, an everyday analogy, talking about food to link it to evangelism. So how is the work of God like food? Well, first of all, food gives us energy for life, it enables us energetically to keep on living; without it, we die. Jesus is saying, doing my Father’s will and evangelism gives me energy and strength. If I can’t do that, it would be better to die.

Secondly, food brings delight and pleasure, doesn’t it? Now, you shouldn’t admit it too much, but it does. I mean, think about it, this may not be your favorite meal, but I love a good steak cooked well, baked potato with all the stuff on top that I’m really not supposed to eat anymore, you know, that kind of thing. You know, salads with the salad dressing that I’m not supposed to eat anymore either, but it’s good occasionally, and then maybe a fruit drink or something like that I love, or some people like carbonated beverages and then ice cream with dark chocolate sauce, something like that. Amen.

Thank you, Tom, I appreciate it.

Oh, boy, your mouths are watering and see, this is the problem, you’re already thinking about where you’re going to go eat lunch, and you already have that predisposition anyway, and now here I’m making it worse, but bear with me just a little longer, okay. Food brings delight and pleasure, and you know why it does? God made it that way. He made it delicious. He made a variety of fruits, and He made a variety of flavors, and He made the tongue with different places to identify those different flavors. God did it. He is the God of pleasure, a God of delight.

Jesus is saying, I enjoy, I delight in doing the will of my Father, it’s delightful for me to lead the Samaritan woman to faith. It brings me pleasure. That’s a great joy. Food is also a focal point of relationships. In every culture, fellowship is kind of consummated to some degree around a good meal. You know, this is in all kinds of cultures, you sit down at a meal with someone and you’re friends for life, covenant of salt, that kind of thing, things that we do together, we eat at a meal together.

Jesus, I think, speaks of this, when He says concerning the Last Supper, and we’re going to be celebrating the Lord’s table today, but the Last Supper, He says: I have earnestly desired to sit at table with you and eat. And in the future of this table that we’re going to celebrate later on, the future is, like we’re going to hear in a beautiful song, God and man at table are sat down. We get to sit at fellowship with the Father at His table. Matthew, chapter 8: Many will come from the east and the west and will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom.

That is the consummation of this meal, we get to eat with God. Now you can see the bitterness of Judas’ betrayal. In John 13:18, he says: He who has shared my bread with me has lifted up his heel against me. That is a great betrayal to eat a meal with someone and then get up and betray them to death. Now, Jesus is saying, my food is to do the will of Him who sent me and finish His work. What he’s saying is, doing my Father’s will in evangelism is the center of my fellowship and friendship with the Father.

And I’ve noticed My Father is always at His work, and I, too, am working. So that’s where I find the Father. That’s why I have fellowship with the Father. Can I just speak a word of application to you right now? Do you feel out of fellowship with the Father, and you don’t know why? Could it be that you’re neglecting to be where He is and do the work He’s doing? He’s out in the field and you’re not, and so therefore, you don’t feel a sense of closeness and fellowship to Him. You don’t see sparkly, exciting moments of Providence when you sit next to somebody and you get into a conversation and it’s just awesome, and you feel the presence of God by the Spirit in that, and you haven’t felt that in a while, because you haven’t ventured forth into the harvest field.

Jesus is saying, my food, my sense of fellowship and togetherness with the Father is to be where He’s at, doing His work. For some people, food is the focus of their entire life. To some degree, it’s true of all of us. It says in Ecclesiastes 6:7: “All man’s efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied.” I love that. Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. Paul said in Philippians 3 that there are some whose God is their stomach. But I think we can relate to this, that food can be meeting that need for yourself and your family, the focus of life, and Jesus is saying, no, my focus is this kind of food, the focus of my life is to the will of God.

And notice He says, it’s not enough just to do the will of Him who sent me. It’s to finish His work. I want to be a finisher. It’s not enough that we should just witness once a month for 2007. Look, those are transitory goals, or something like that. I’d like to see some finishing going on, I’d like to see the thing accomplished. Now, I’ll get to sowing and reaping, we’ll talk about that in a minute, but I see in Jesus a passion to finish the work God assigned to Him. And that’s what I’m talking about.

John 5:36: “For the very work that the Father has given me to finish, and which I am doing testifies that the Father has sent me.” John 17:4, high priestly prayer. “Father, I have brought you glory on earth by finishing [or completing] the work You gave me to do.” And then even more on the cross, after He had taken that drink in fulfillment of the last prophecy that needed to be fulfilled while He was living, He took the drink, and what did he say? “It is finished.” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of Him who sent me,” and what? Finish His work. He finished it. He shed His blood on the cross for sinners like you and me. He finished it.

Let me just stop a moment and say, I trusted God this morning, that there would be somebody here today who has not come to faith in Christ yet. Let Christ’s work finish in you by faith. Trust in Him in the shedding of blood for your sins to the salvation of your soul. Trust in Him. Trust in Him to finish your salvation. He said, “It is finished” because it is complete, it’s all we need is the blood of Christ. And if I can stop at this moment of the sermon and say, if you’re not sitting near any non-Christians, why don’t you invite a non-Christian to church next week? ‘Cause I’ll be trusting God next week, there’ll be somebody that will need to hear the gospel directly, so bring someone who needs to hear it. But Jesus is a finisher and He finished the work of salvation.

All right, the second analogy He uses is harvest, and we’ve already talked about that. Verse 35: “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.” So Jesus likens the work of evangelism to the reaping of a harvest. A harvest is a wonderful time in a farm community, it’s a wonderful time. Now, we are very removed from our food, aren’t we? A long way away from the farms. All right we go to the supermarket and it’s frozen or packaged or wrapped in cellophane or something like that, but it comes ultimately up from the earth when God gives it, and so therefore a harvest is a time of celebration.

Look, the Pilgrims in Plymouth, they knew it, they knew that God had sent Squanto so that they wouldn’t die that next winter, and when the crops came up better than they could have expected, what do they do but celebrate. They had a celebration. A celebration of life. It’s a time of joy. Now, the problem is that these disciples were waiting four months more and then the harvest. That was the problem. No, now, today, here and now, is the harvest in this case, not four months more.

Lesson by Command: Lift Up Your Eyes and Look

So He uses food and He uses the harvest. He also gives them a lesson by command. He tells them, lift up your eyes and look. It is so easy to miss what God is doing around you, and what that moment calls for. The disciples seem to have been blind to the Samaritans in that village and how ready they were to hear the Gospel, how prepared they were to hear the Gospel, they were blind to it. A Samaritan woman rejected by her own people puts down her water jar and goes and demonstrates how ready they were to hear the Gospel. They were ready.

Verse 28: Then leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ? They came out of the town and made their way toward Him.” Now, how much more effective would a group of Jewish disciples buying food have been who didn’t see one little thing about you’ve had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband. No, they’ve seen a river of miracles, they’ve seen dead people raised to life, they’ve seen… they’ve seen lame people able to walk, they have seen stuff that this woman has not seen, they could have gone in there with a tremendous excitement and say, “We have got to introduce you to someone, come and see a man who…” And then lists a bunch of things, not just told me everything I ever did, but did all of these things in Jerusalem, healed huge crowds of people, come and see. They could have done it.

I get the picture that they went into the Samaritan town not wanting to touch anything. I know it’s just imagination, maybe they didn’t. But you get the picture like, what are we going to buy? I don’t want to eat any of this Samaritan food. And there is a kind of a racism there, I think, a racial hatred of the Samaritans, they don’t have anything to do with them, and it isn’t it enough, Jesus, we went and bought the food? And I think that can be demonstrated, you can see that in someone’s facial expression, a hesitation in approach, they were not opened, and so therefore, I think their eyes were closed to what God was doing and how ready these folks were, for Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

I find this confirmed in another text, in Luke 9:54, don’t turn there, but just listen. There was another Samaritan village Jesus went to and they were not ready, they were against Jesus, and they did not want Jesus to come in their village. Now, I tell you, not every field is ripe for harvest, that is an important principle in this text. Some Samaritan villages are ready, come on in; other Samaritan villages are closed, get out of here, we’re not interested. Not every field is ripe for harvest.

Well, how did the disciples deal with that village? What? How dare they reject Jesus? Lord, do you want us to call down fire and let’s just deal with this right now? Remember that Sodom and Gomorrah thing? I think the Samaritan village deserves it. What do you think? Calling down fire on the enemies of God. Jesus rebuked them and said, You don’t understand the spirit I have. The Son of Man came not to destroy lives, but to save them. If I wanted to destroy from heaven, I could have done it without the incarnation. I came here to save. Let’s move on. 

Partnership in Ministry: Hard and Easy Labor

Sowing and Reaping: Both Equally Essential

They weren’t ready. And so the disciples Weren’t ready either, they weren’t ready to reap a harvest of Samaritans, so he uses a Samaritan woman. All right, now having gotten them ready and taught them, he now gives them some key lessons on how the ministry is going to go, partnership in ministry, hard and easy labor. Look at verse 36-38. “Even now,” it says, “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.”

Vital to Discern What the Situation Calls For

I was reading a book recently by Tim Downs called Finding Common Ground. And he argues in that book that America is not a field ripe for harvest anymore, and that many Evangelicals are still in harvest mode when they should be in plowing and sowing mode. We live in a kind of a post-modern, some say post-Christian era, in which we have a hard time connecting with people because we just see things so differently. America has changed, and some churches are still in big-time harvest mode, when really there’s a different work being called, we’re being called to do a different work.

And imagine a farmer who decides, “I am done with plowing and I am done with sowing, I like to reap. I enjoy reaping and the party that comes afterwards. Let’s just do harvest from now on, what do you say? Let’s just go out and harvest. Look, if you go out into evangelism with that mentality, you will not last long. I would like to see this church and the individuals in it be versatile in this work. If the situation calls for sowing, then sow. If it calls for plowing, then plow. If it calls for reaping, then reap. I think we need to be discerning and be ready to do any of it and consider it a success as we’re led by the Spirit.

It’s vital to discern what God is doing in someone’s heart. This week, I went to a conference in New York City on dealing with militant Islam. You pretty much have to be blind to current events to not see the impact that militant Islam is having on the flow of human history today. You look at the places in the world where there are hot spots of military conflict and different issues, and you’ll find militant Islam behind most of them. The question before us is, what’s the church to do about it? What are we doing about the fact that in the year 2012, I think it is, the Olympics will be in London, and right next to the place where the Olympics will be, will be a huge 40,000-person mosque completed by then.

The images that will come from London will be of Islam right next to where the Olympics are being held. The question is, what do we do about it? Well, I was on the plane flight and God chose for me to sit next to… And I love who God chooses. It’s just exciting to me. Who’s going to sit next to me and will I have a chance? If they put on those infernal headphones and they get into their MP3 music, I’m finished. What can I do? Would you take your headphones off? I want to talk to you about Jesus. It doesn’t work too well.

But this man was a very open, friendly Indian man, going back to India to be with his sick mother. He was it an oncologist, a very intelligent man, we talked the whole way to New York. And he told me all about Hinduism and the Vedic scriptures, and we talked about reincarnation, we talked about idolatry. I talked about idolatry as a diminishment of God, and we talked about Christ, we talked about the sacrificial system, we talked about all these things, we would still be talking if we hadn’t landed. It was a great conversation, but I knew the whole time the likelihood that he was going to bow and pray the sinner’s prayer with me on that flight was pretty much zero. Now you say, oh, you of little faith. It had nothing to do with that, it had to do with sensing where the man was at and what the situation called for.

And the situation called for building a relationship. I gave him my card, some other things, and I think he’s going to call me. He lives down in Fayetteville. He said he’d like to meet me for lunch. I don’t know what’s going to come. Maybe the reaping time will be two years down the road, maybe ten years down the road. I don’t think anything’s wasted. That was the time. Coming back, I had a taxi ride with a man who was from Guyana. He was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist situation, had rejected his spiritual background and was doing nothing, but he did have a Bible at home. He had no idea that there was specific prophecy in the Old Testament about the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ. Never heard of it.

He said, “Where are they?” I said, “I’ll write them down.” I took my card and wrote them down on the back, we talked the whole way to JFK, the whole way, and he said, “Well, I’m going to read that when I get back.” He was not going to bow and pray the sinner’s prayer with me, better not while he’s driving. All right, 6:00 in the morning in New York, there’s no traffic and there’s no time for bowing and praying, okay? But again, what did the situation call for? It called for that.

Then I sat next to, on the plane, and this was fun, you get to that little terminal, that little computer thing, and you can kind of choose your seats if you get there early enough. And so I had my choice of four different seats, and it’s like this moment of providence, ’cause I don’t know who’s in the occupied seat next to it. And I say, “I have no idea, Lord.” So then I just think, where do I want to sit? That’s right, it comes down to, so I don’t want to sit right over the wing, you can’t see anything, all right? So I chose a seat up a little further so I could see out the window, ’cause I don’t fly that much and I like to look out and see.

So I chose up there, and there was a young lady who’s a student at Chapel Hill, really intelligent young lady, went to New York to be involved in a kind of a political dialogue, whatever, she’s a very high-powered person, very intelligent, young, probably 20 years old, came from a Presbyterian background, was basically rejecting, it seemed, inerrancy, rejecting central aspects of our faith. We talked the whole way back about militant Islam, about a number of things, and about Jesus’s view of Scripture, and why I believe that there are no errors in the Bible, because Jesus believed it.

Sowing Harder Than Reaping

That called for a different situation. It was a different time. I just would like us as a church to be versatile, to handle whatever God gives, so that we’re ready to do the work of the Father. And may I say too that the plowing and sowing is harder work than the reaping. Jesus says, others have done the what? Hard work. The hard labor is that… Is it fun bumping into somebody’s hostility to Christianity, do you enjoy that? I don’t. But if you do it well, you’ll make it easier for the next Christian who bumps into it, it’s not so hard anymore, because of some things you say, some Scripture, your demeanor and approach. I think we need to be able to do whatever the situation calls for.

“Four Months and Then the Harvest”

Now, Spurgeon preached the sermon, he was talking about four months more, then the harvest. Can I urge you not to be lazy in this matter? He was frustrated, because we don’t expect conversions. We always think God did great things in the past, and He will do great things in the future. Four months more and then the harvest. Four months more and then the harvest. I keep hearing it, said Spurgeon, and he is saying, lift up your eyes and look, when the field is ripe, bring them in, because hell keeps open and death keeps scything and reaping people. It keeps going on.

Reaping What Others Have Sown

And so it says very plainly in Proverbs, “He who harvests in the summer is a wise son, but he who sleeps during the harvest is a disgraceful son.” Oh, that we may not be disgraceful during the harvest time. We have got to be active and involved in it.

Well, what’s our way of application? Well, first of all, I would love to see happen what happened here in this text, wouldn’t you? Look at verse 39. “Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them. Two more days, he stayed. And because of his words, many more became believers.” Verse 41.

A harvest into the kingdom. Where are those people now? They’re in Heaven with Jesus, eternally there. Don’t you want to be involved? Aren’t you hungry and thirsty to do the will of your Father and bring a whole bunch of people into the kingdom? That’s the yearning that comes out of the text for me.

And so we must imitate Christ’s example. We must be focused on the will of God, we must repent where needed, we must be willing to do the hard labor of sowing, and I’m urging you to be expectant to reap. For the rest of my ministry here, I’m going to kneel down and pray and expect that God will use the message to convert somebody. I’m going to expect it. It’s going to affect the way I preach, it’s going to affect the way I come into the pulpit, it’s going to affect perhaps where some of you will pray for me, it’s going to probably affect the way you’ll think about in terms of inviting people. I will trust God that these words will be words of life for somebody. Won’t you close with me in prayer as we prepare for the Lord’s Supper.