A Harvest from an Unlikely Place

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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which is in John 4. If you please turn to John 4, and then when you have that, please stand for the reading of God's Word.

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And read verses 7 to 42. These are the words of the

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Lord. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink.

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For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him,

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How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

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Jesus answered her, If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you,

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Give me a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him,

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Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?

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Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.

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Jesus said to her, Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again.

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The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life.

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The woman said to him, Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.

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Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband.

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Jesus said to her, You are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you have, one now have, is not your husband.

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What you have said is true. The woman said to him, Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.

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Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her,

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Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the

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Father. You worship what you do not know, we worship what we know, for salvation is from the

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Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the

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Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

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The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he comes, he will tell us all things.

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She has said to her, I who speak to you am he. Just then the disciples came back.

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They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, What do you seek her? Why are you talking with her?

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So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.

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Can this be the Christ? Then they went out of town and were coming to him. Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, saying,

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Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples said to one another,

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Has anyone brought him something to eat? Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

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Do you not say there are yet four months, then comes the harvest? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest.

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Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life. So that sower and reaper may rejoice together.

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For here the saying holds true, One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap for that which you did not labor.

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Others have labored and you have entered into their labor. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony.

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He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days, and many more believed because of his word.

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They said to the woman, It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the

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Savior of the world. You may be seated. Good morning.

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It's nice to be in your midst again. My wife Shirley is right here on this side of the sanctuary, and we're thankful to be in your midst once more.

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It's been several years since we've been here, and before we get into this passage and look at it by God's grace,

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I just wanted to bring a greeting from our sending church just over the hill over here in Livermore, Gateway Church.

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Greetings to you all, and greetings from our family to yourself. Normally, over the past 20 years, our son would be with us as well.

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Timothy is sitting right next to his mom, but he's not here, only because he's a big guy now, and he's off in college at Biola University.

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So we are just the two of us here, but we're thankful to be here, and we want to thank you all for over the years praying for us faithfully and supporting us faithfully, and as many of you know, we're making this transition back here to the

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States. We've been back about five months now trying to get settled, so hopefully we'll see you not in three years or four years like we normally do, but maybe a little bit more often.

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We'll see how God leads. So it's a privilege to be here in your midst and to open up God's Word. I thank Pastor Connolly for reading that portion of God's Word in John 4, 7 through 42.

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Before we actually dive into this text, let me pray once more. Pray with me, would you please?

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Father, we thank you for this opportunity to consider the words of Christ, as well as the words of the narrative here, and we pray for the blessed work of your

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Holy Spirit in our hearts, both preacher and hearer alike, and help us to be not only good hearers, but also good doers of your

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Word. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. The title to the sermon today, as you see in your bulletin, is

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A Harvest from an Unlikely Place. Let me start off with an illustration. Rice is a crop that is normally grown in flat plains on and in well -flooded fields, and an example of this is right here in Northern California, up where my family is from, the

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Sacramento Valley. There, 97 % of California's rice crop is grown in land that is just like that.

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There's about 550 ,000 acres of flat plains of well -watered fields, and that place yields a harvest of about 5 billion pounds of rice a year.

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Can you imagine that? Very fertile. But what if I told you that I've seen places where rice is not grown on those flat plains of well -watered fields?

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Would you believe me? Yes, we've seen rice being harvested on mountainsides.

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In the province where we were at for about 18 years, about 80 % of the land is mountainous, and clever and hardworking farmers of that province, for centuries, have built rice terraces going up sometimes hundreds, if not sometimes thousands of feet into the air, as it were, along the sides of those mountain cliffs, mountainsides.

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And there they harvest, they plant their crop, and they harvest a rich crop of rice.

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They reap a harvest of rice in a very unlikely place, and I believe in this passage we have something spiritually that's akin to that.

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A rich harvest from a very unlikely place. Let's look at the text. And in this passage we're going to consider today, we'll see

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Jesus and his disciples reap a very rich spiritual gospel harvest, again, in a very unlikely place.

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We're going to take a look at three things today. Number one, Jesus sows the gospel.

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Number two, Jesus inspires his disciples. And then thirdly, Jesus reaps the harvest.

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First off, let's look at verses 7 through 30. And here the first point is

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Jesus sows the gospel. There's so many aspects of this, but I'm going to walk through that chunk of God's word and pull out just a few things of what he's doing as he sows the gospel seed.

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Notice Jesus initiates a conversation with this Samaritan woman. We see here that Jesus was willing to go against cultural and ethnic taboos, no -nos, in order to minister to a soul.

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You see, Jewish rabbinic tradition strictly cautioned a man from speaking with women in general.

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And John tells us that Jesus spoke alone to this woman from Samaria. And she, being alone, without other women drawing water with her at the well, probably indicated that she was ostracized from society for her immoral lifestyle.

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Jesus, for Jesus to speak with her alone in his Jewish culture, would also be seen as inappropriately flirting with a woman.

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And look at the reaction, for instance, of his disciples in verse 27. At this point, his disciples came and they marveled that he talked with a woman.

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Yet no one said, what do you seek? And why are you speaking with her? To make things even more socially and culturally awkward, to say the least,

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Jesus was engaging in a conversation not only with a woman, but with a Samaritan woman.

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Kind of a double whammy there. Not only a woman, but he's also speaking with a Samaritan.

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And we have to remember a little bit about the background of that tension between the

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Jewish people and their culture along with the Samaritans to understand the awkward situation that was present there at the well as Jesus spoke with this

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Samaritan woman. In John 4 verse 9, John wrote, for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.

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It captures the historic and racial animosity between the Jews and the

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Samaritans. The Samaritans lived in the area in between the Sea of Galilee and to the south,

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Jerusalem. They're right there in between. And this animosity goes back to the exile of the northern tribes of Israel, according to 2

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Kings chapter 17 verses 24 through 41. If you get a chance to look that up, you can really see the background of where this animosity comes from.

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2 Kings 17, 24 through 41. But for the sake of time, we won't go to that text.

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I'll just reference it. And to summarize it here, after the Assyrians conquered the northern tribes and took them captive, they colonized

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Samaria with people from other lands that they had already conquered.

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They backfilled behind themselves there in Samaria with other people they had colonized.

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And they hired a Jewish priest to teach those colonists of theirs the Jewish religion.

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And they thought, and they did this more out of superstition than from true reverence to the

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Lord. They thought that if they told or taught their colonists through this

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Jewish priest, they would prosper better in the land if the colonists worshiped the

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God of that land. And in time, these colonists mixed together both

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Jewish as well as old pagan beliefs and practice. And then the mission field, in the mission field, both before and now, we have a term called syncretism, which is that very thing of mixing in some parts of true biblical religion with animism or the local beliefs and practices that are around the people that we're seeking to target with the gospel and to build a church in.

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So that's what was happening there in Samaria. There was a syncretism going on, a pulling together of pagan as well as aspects of biblical religion.

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And so the Jews despise the Samaritans as not true ethnic and religious

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Israelites. That's the root of the tension here. And so fast forward into the time frame of our text, and you can understand better,

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I trust, the awkwardness of what was happening here. Jesus, a rabbi, speaking, one with a woman, which wasn't supposed to happen in public, and number two, a

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Samaritan of all things. And here I think we have an application,

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I believe, for ourselves. In our evangelism and missions work, brothers and sisters, we have to be willing, like Christ, to cross cultural and ethnic boundaries as our

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Savior did himself. Being willing to risk being looked at by brothers and sisters and an eyebrow turned up saying, really,

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Chris? You want to interact with that person? Do you know in our culture what that person really is considered?

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We need to be willing, like Christ, to cross these cultural and ethnic boundaries for the sake of the gospel.

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When Jesus gave the church the Great Commission in Matthew 28, he said, make disciples of some of the nations.

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Is that what he says? No, make disciples of all the nations. And that phrase, all the nations, does not mean nation states, politically speaking, or political countries.

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But rather it means, to translate it a little bit more simply, it means people groups, different people groups, people groups that are different ethnically, culturally, linguistically.

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Jesus wants his church to have their eye on making disciples through the gospel of all the ethnically different peoples of the world.

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That's what Christ is saying there in the Great Commission. We have, brothers and sisters, built into the

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DNA of the church a willingness, we should have a willingness, to cross cultures.

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Jesus is saying in this commission that we need to be doing that. And in that sense,

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I trust we do have, I believe we have that in our DNA. We see that worked out in Jerusalem at the preaching of Peter on Pentecost, filled with the

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Holy Spirit, and the other disciples filled with the Holy Spirit. They were out there speaking and testifying of Jesus Christ with different languages, true tongues, different languages that were being communicated.

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And it says in the book of Acts that people were saying, wow, this is a wondrous thing. But they were hearing the gospel in their own native tongues.

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I think that's testimony of not only the cross -cultural DNA that's in the church, but also the

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Holy Spirit enabling us to grow cross -culturally. We have an example right there at the very birth of the church, of us, the church, doing that very thing.

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And we need to continue to be willing to do that. I know it's awkward. I know it feels weird to cross cultures and do that.

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After 18 years in the big country in Asia, and two and a half years in Malaysia with my family, we know very well how challenging it is to cross cultures.

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But that's what we're to be about if we're going to get the gospel out and to make disciples of all the nations.

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And I know many of you are doing that here. So I trust that you hear in my words here an encouragement as well if you're already doing that, going cross -culturally with the gospel.

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Take it as a challenge if you're feeling a bit ethnocentric or a little bit awkward and reluctant to do that.

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Take it as a challenge. Christ is with you. Christ's own example encourages us to continue to go cross -culture with the gospel.

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And also, in terms of application, do we have this all people groups mentality that Jesus wants his church to have?

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Are we growing in it? When he gives us opportunity to engage in evangelism and missions that crosses cultures, do we shy away from it or do we by faith, obedient, take the opportunity?

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And also, the demographics of our country are changing. And here in the Bay Area for a long time, many, many decades, we know about cross -cultural work, don't we?

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This is a melting pot, as it were, of the world. So many different cultures and people from different countries are right here.

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And in a very real sense, the world has come to our doorstep as the church. And we have an opportunity to share the gospel with so many people here.

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In the workplace, so many foreign workers from different lands, interns that are here for just the summer that we can reach.

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In our colleges and universities, international students who are lonely and going through culture shock.

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You know, I've read some studies that those Christians in various parts of the world who have reached out to international students have found, by and large, a warm welcome in the hearts of those international students because they're lonely.

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They're feeling awkward. And when someone locally, especially Christians, come and say, I'll show you how to shop at a

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Safeway here. I'll show you where you can do this or that. They appreciate that. And that building of the relationship oftentimes is a platform for the sharing of the gospel of Christ.

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And here in the Bay Area, we know that the demographics of our country is very mixed. And it's changing all over the place.

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Even in our Tri -Valley area, I've been tracking the statistics, the demographic statistics there.

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And it's changed greatly. Our little town of Livermore hasn't changed much, but Pleasanton and Dublin hugely.

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We drive through the streets of Dublin and Pleasanton now, and we think, ah, I feel at home now.

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We got people from all over the world here. And we're excited about what the Lord may be doing in the Tri -Valley area to reach people from different parts of the world as well as the locals.

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And what ripple effects that might have back in the home countries of the people who are new immigrants or people who are visiting as interns and what have you.

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And so we've got to reckon with the fact of a demographically changing country.

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They've been changing for decades, as I've said. And one of the reasons for this is the phenomenal increase in international migration in our country and around the world.

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In fact, the former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan said this in 2006, quote, international migration is one of the greatest issues of this century.

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We have entered a new era of mobility, unquote. Now, we can either view this increase in international migration here in our own country and here in our own geographic area either as a danger or as an opportunity.

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Choose the latter. See it as an opportunity from a kingdom perspective that we can reach people more easily from different parts of the world because they're coming to us.

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Missiologist Michael Pocock wrote, quote, around the world Christians are waking up to the reality that the massive movement of people in migration presents an unprecedented opportunity for spreading the gospel, unquote.

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Scott Arbeter, the president of World Relief, perhaps the largest evangelical organization ministering to migrants and refugees, has said, quote,

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God is up to something dramatic. The mass migration that now brings us into contact with people from every tribe and tongue and nation is both a profound privilege and a daunting responsibility, unquote.

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How are we going to respond to this here in this church? Great opportunities.

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Now, perhaps here we have among us some who are not Christians, and if that's your case, my friend, we're so happy that you're here today.

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And one thing I want to say to you as we consider further in this text how

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Jesus interacted with this Samaritan woman, I hope for you, my friend, you hear what the

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Savior, the only Savior that God has given to people like you and me. The only Savior of the world, what

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He's really like. He's a compassionate one. He's willing to speak to even the outcasts of society and to minister to their needs.

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That's the Savior that we present to you here in this church and today in this sermon.

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A real human. He was God of very God, but He was also human.

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He walked among us 2 ,000 years ago, and here we have one story of how compassionate and caring and loving

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He was to this immoral woman. And if you've had ideas of Christ as being harsh or not accepting you because you didn't live up to His standards and He'd never look at you or ever want to have any dealings with you, banish those thoughts, my friend.

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That's not the Savior, the Jesus of the

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Bible, but here's one who was willing even to take the form of a human being, leaving the glory of heaven to become one of us and to live in our broken world and to feel the pains and the brokenness of a society and ultimately to be cruelly nailed to a cross and to die for all of those who would place their faith in Him.

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This is the Savior that we present to you today, and so be attracted, my friend, to Jesus today.

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Perhaps you're here today and you feel like a Samaritan, an outcast from some social circle.

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Look at how Jesus is willing to kindly speak with this outcast Samaritan woman. Or perhaps you feel as a non -Christian you're alienated from God, and it's true if you're outside of Christ.

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You're alienated from Him, and yet there's hope. Know that this compassionate Savior is the

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Savior of the world. He alone can make your relationship with God right. You have to put your trust in Him.

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You have to turn from your sins and to receive the blessings that come to Him through the gospel.

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And then continuing on in the text, let's move on and see that Jesus was willing to cross all these cultural and ethnic traditions in order to sow the seed of the gospel into the heart of the

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Samaritan woman. It's the gospel seed about Himself, Jesus, the

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Messiah, the Christ. That's the content He wants her to get. In verse 10,

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Jesus gives and speaks about the living water that He's willing to give.

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Jesus engages the woman with a topic that is very much upon her heart.

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And what's that topic that's very much upon her heart? Water, physical water. That's what's upon her mind and upon her heart.

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Yet it's obvious to us that He is not speaking about physical water, but about spiritual water.

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And in the gospel of John, the metaphor of living water is used also in John 7, verse 38 and 39.

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And in the gospel of John, Jesus uses this metaphor, which means the wonderful, abounding, overflowing life that the

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Spirit brings to a saved person's life. He's saying to the woman, there's something better than just the mere water that you want.

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There's a living water that I can give you. It's spiritual. It's an overflowing of that salvation life that I can bring to you by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. But what happens? The woman's thinking is fixated where?

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On the vertical, what Christ is saying, or on the horizontal? On the horizontal, isn't it? She's just thinking of physical water.

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And so then, and so when Jesus speaks about living water, she responds in verse 15, give me this water too.

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She wants it for herself so she won't have to physically thirst again and won't have to keep coming back to that well there in Samaria.

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She probably, if they had PVC pipes at that time, she would have said to Jesus, you got that water?

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Just stick a pipe on one end and just pull that line over to my, to my hut over there.

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I like, I'd like that water over there on a tap. She wanted that water. But Jesus was gently leading her in the conversation to think of her soul's vertical relationship with God.

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And this living water is a water, he says, that's springing up into everlasting life.

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And later, in John 17 verse 3, Jesus defines this everlasting life as a believer's entering into an intimate relationship with God such that we truly know him.

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And here too, brothers and sisters, I believe we have an application in verse 10, from verse 10.

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In our evangelism and missions work, we should tell those that we share the gospel with about the abundant relational blessings that come from becoming a disciple of Christ.

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Living water, Jesus speaks about. And remember what he means by that in the book of John.

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That overflow of that deep well of relational blessing and truth and peace and joy that comes from a restored relationship with him.

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Jesus is putting that before her in his evangelism to her. I believe we can do the same.

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To talk about that abundant relational blessing that comes from believing upon Christ. When we come to faith in Christ, the

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Spirit takes up residence in us and the Spirit blesses us with a sense of peace with God.

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He brings to us a joy that is in Christ. He gives us a sense of God's fatherly and unending love for us.

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The Spirit gives us liberty from the fear of the devil and evil spirits, which is a huge thing in the part of the world where we're from.

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Liberty from the fear of the devil and the evil spirits. He also delivers us from the fear of death, and we can go on and on about the relational blessings that come to us as we receive the gospel.

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And to you, my unbelieving friend, you can be like that Samaritan woman.

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You are fixated on just the horizontal concerns of this life. I want to make more money,

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I want to enjoy more leisure and pleasure, or I want to achieve this project or status, and then

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I'll be happy, perhaps you say to yourself. But Jesus in the gospel is gently leading you to get your eyes on the more important vertical relationship between you and God.

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Jesus said, what shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but he loses his own soul?

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You hear what Jesus is saying? The horizontal things aren't evil in themselves, but if you're all in all the horizontal things, what is it going to profit you, my friend?

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Jesus is saying to you. If you gain everything, you become the CEO of the corporation that you're a part of.

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You have a million -dollar house on the Pleasanton Ridge side of here and maybe some place in Malibu too.

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What if you gained all of those things? Are you really going to be happy? Jesus says no. The things that are more important are those things that are vertical, your relationship with God, your own soul for eternity.

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Put your trust in Jesus, my friend, to save you from your sins, confess them, turn from your sins, and know the blessings of forgiveness of sin and a renewed relationship with God.

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That's where true treasure is. You know, I've heard stories of corporation heads,

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CEOs who have gathered for themselves and worked hard all their 30, 40 years only to realize on their deathbed, and you hear these deathbed confessions.

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I heard one where he said in his own words, I realize now here at the end of my life that my ladder of value was leading up against the wrong wall.

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May that not be you, my friend. Work hard, yes. Earn as much as you can, save as much as you can, give as much as you can, but more importantly, look to Christ, and that vertical relationship with God through Christ will be restored as you look to Christ.

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But let's hasten on to verses 16 through 18. Jesus, the revealer of hearts.

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Jesus truly wants to lead this woman to drink of the springs of everlasting life, but in order to have this benefit, he needs to bring her sexual sins to light.

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In order to have this living water of eternal life that the Spirit brings, she must confess and turn from her sins, and Jesus seeks to do that.

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And here, too, we see in our evangelism and missions work, we have to bring up sin, brothers and sisters.

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We have to bring up sin. We have to tell people about the bad news before they really can understand and appreciate the good news.

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Like Jesus, in order for those to whom we minister to receive the good news of forgiveness of sins through Christ, we need to first tell them the bad news of how their sins have caused a distance between them and a holy

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God. In some cultures, we need to paint this picture of the bad news not only in the terms of legal guilt, which is true and biblical to talk about their sins before a holy

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God, before the judge of heaven. They're guilty. Yes, we must use that metaphor because it's biblical, but in some cultures, they are more attuned to relational honor and shame considerations.

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And perhaps using the parable of the prodigal son, as we often had to do in Asia, because they are oftentimes more wired to think relationally, and that really grips their hearts rather than the forensic legal understanding of sin.

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But when we talk to them and open up the parable of the prodigal son with this message of a broken relationship and honor and shame, then the reconciliation of a relationship seems to resonate more in their hearts.

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And that's biblical too. So we need to be wise in how we share the gospel as we go cross -culturally, being full orbed and wise culturally with a cultural intelligence as we present and package the gospel for them.

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Not changing it, but adapting it so they can understand it more clearly by God's help.

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And also, my friend, if you're here today and not a disciple or follower of Jesus, then know you're still guilty of your sins, your shameful sins even, and there's a holy

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God who has to judge them. But if you part from your sins and you trust in Jesus and turn from your sins and your sinful ways to follow

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Jesus, God will wipe away the guilt and the shame of your sins. And you will stand in a new father -child relationship with the true and the living

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God and your creator and my creator. It's your choice. You need to come to him is my urging.

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Then as we hasten on into verses 19 through 24, we see Jesus, the restorer of true worship.

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Again, what he's doing here that I'm seeking to open up in the first point, these are his ways of sowing the gospel seed into her heart.

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So he takes up now Jesus, the restorer of true worship. It's because the

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Samaritan does something here and asks him a question, and he takes up and runs with it a little bit.

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The Samaritans and this Samaritan woman, their problem with worship is with the proper place of worship.

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She is asking, Jesus, where is the proper place for worship? Jerusalem or here in Samaria?

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But Jesus, when you notice his response, he transcends her argument. He transcends her questioning.

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He says she's thinking the wrong way.

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She's asking the wrong question. It's not a question in speaking about worship, a question about the proper place of worship, but it's a question of the proper condition of the heart and content.

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True worship consists of spirit and in truth, he says. Spirit, that is, true worshipers are people who are born again by the

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Spirit of God. They're true worshipers because they've been born from above. And truth, that is, worship, true worship that is focused on Jesus Christ, who is the truth.

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See John 14, verse 6. And here, too, brothers and sisters, in our evangelism and missions work, are we helping local believers in new church plants to focus on true worship that comes from regenerate hearts who are focused on Jesus Christ?

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I don't know the plans that your church has here. Perhaps in the future, you all are going to be planting a new church domestically, or perhaps you're going to continue, like with us in the past, help us to plant churches in other foreign fields.

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But one of the things you want to see and pray for, whether domestically or in the foreign mission field, is for churches to be established that is filled with worshipers that have regenerate hearts and that the true focus of those new church plants are

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Jesus Christ and his word. That's the type of churches, those are the types of churches that we want.

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And then in verses 25 and 26, Jesus emphasizes that he is the

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Christ. The woman in the conversation seems to pick up on Jesus' meaning when he talked about truth, worshipers in spirit and in truth.

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She seems to pick up. And she says that she seems to know,

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I should say, he was talking about Messiah or Christ. So she begins to speak with him about Messiah, the

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Christ. Think about the shift that has happened in her conversation with Jesus here.

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Jesus has succeeded in bringing her focus away from just plain physical water and away from the controversy about the place of worship.

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And he brings her to focus, her focus to be where he's wanted that focus to be, on his very person.

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He is the Messiah, the Christ, the long expected savior of the world.

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And here too, brothers and sisters, in our evangelism and in our missions work, we too need to contextualize our approach as Jesus has been here doing as well.

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Contextualizing in the biblical way. Jesus contextualizes his message to this

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Samaritan woman. He contextualizes it by discussing topics that greatly interested her.

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Cool water. He spoke in a way that she could understand and then he moved her to spiritual things.

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He moved her from speaking about water eventually to speaking and listening to talk about Christ.

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Contextualizing, brothers and sisters, means the process of taking the biblical contents of the

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Christian message and packaging it in ways that increases the likelihood of our audience understanding that message.

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Not changing the gospel, but speaking about it in such a way that they can better understand.

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We see a wonderful example of that here in Christ working with this

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Samaritan woman. Contextualizing starts with understanding something of the audience's culture, history, and language.

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Certainly, it starts really even before that understanding the message of the gospel. But assuming that we all understand the message of the gospel, we need to also pay attention to our audience's culture, their background, even their language.

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Paul did this in Acts 17. When he spoke in terms the philosophers in Athens could understand.

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And we too need to learn about the various people groups around us here in our communities.

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This will help us to better contextualize the gospel message to them. This will help them better understand the gospel by God's help.

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Sometimes when reaching peoples from other cultures that are more concrete, relational, we need to demonstrate the gospel by physically helping them.

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I talked about earlier about international students and student, excuse me, studies that have been done that I've encountered where these students oftentimes come from a concrete relational background rather than being, you know, diachronic, rather than being so a concentrating on achieving a task or being on time as oftentimes our

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Western culture is. It's not necessarily bad, but oftentimes they come from other cultures that are looking at concrete relational things that really grips them.

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And so when we here take the time in concrete ways to help them with how to shop somewhere, how or where to go pay their bills, or how to handle a ticket that they just got on the highway or something, how to cut their lawn, they appreciate that, and that builds once more that platform to speak into their lives the gospel.

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My dear mother -in -law, Shirley's mother, living in San Francisco, they immigrated here from Taiwan back in 1980, and there was a dear church there with a pastor that was very much, who was also

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Chinese, who understood the culture. He not only preached the gospel every Sunday, but he also through the week was busy in the lives of these new immigrants, helping them with this very thing, helping them to learn

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English and finding out, finding teachers who could help them with English, helping them with just concrete reality of living in this new country, and that opened up the of my mother -in -law and the family to be part of that church, and she's still part of that church to this very day.

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And so we need to be about doing similar things, and also in our evangelism and missions work, we must keep

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Jesus as the focus of our message. In Acts 1, verse 8,

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Jesus sent his disciples out on mission with these words, but you shall receive power when the

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Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all

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Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. Jesus calls the church to be witnesses to him, and we are to tell people about Jesus' birth and his life and his teaching and miracles and death and resurrection, glorification and his return.

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Our gospel needs to be Christ -centered and saturated. And then in verses 27 through 30, let's look there, please.

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Notice the response of the men in the village. They heard, and they all started to march over to Jesus.

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Now, keep this in mind as we consider the rest of this passage. They are moving, the men of the village of that Samaritan village are moving out physically.

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To engage Jesus and his disciples wherever they were on the outskirts of that area of that village.

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And so the first point, we've seen that Jesus was sowing the seed of the gospel.

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And then secondly, Jesus inspires his disciples, verses 31 through 38.

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The disciples are fixated also on the horizontal. Look at verse 8 again.

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We are told the disciples left Jesus for a time to buy food for the team. They have been thinking of horizontal concerns for a while, food and drink.

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They've been doing their duty to care for Jesus and the team. And in verse 27, the disciples re -enter the scene.

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And they've been thinking again for several hours on the horizontal plane, food and drink for the team.

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And they bring back these very things and tell Jesus to eat something. So when

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Jesus replies, I have food to eat of which you do not know. They almost comically respond, huh?

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Did someone give him something to eat earlier? Because their thinking is just horizontal at that point.

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And then Jesus goes on to explain his meaning of food. It's the spiritual food of doing the redemptive work that the father had sent him to do.

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And we're like the disciples, aren't we, brothers and sisters? So fixated at times just on the horizontal things of life.

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Not necessarily bad, but they can overwhelm us. They can so preoccupy our minds that our vertical responsibilities can blur or our perspective with a vertical perspective can blur as well.

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And so, like the disciples, we can be rightly busy with all the horizontal duties of earning money so that we can feed and clothe and care for our families.

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That's right. Taking care of our kids. That's right. Taking care of aged parents. Yes, that's one big reason why we're back here in the

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States, to care for aging parents. Taking care of those house and other assets. Yes, et cetera.

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All of these things are horizontal and important. All well and good, like the disciples.

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That's part of our duties. But the danger is that we can get so fixated on just the horizontal that we lose sight of the important, vertical, heavenly, redemptive work of the kingdom of God.

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And one of the things Jesus does repeatedly in his teachings is to challenge his disciples to not be so fixated on the horizontal, but to place more importance on the vertical work of the kingdom of God.

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And we see that here. We see that when Jesus said in Matthew 6, seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.

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Or when Jesus said, and had these words in Luke 10 to Martha, Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about so many things.

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We hear in these two other passages that I've briefly referenced that very truth.

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That Jesus is oftentimes telling his disciples, you're focused too much on the horizontal. There's other things you need to be thinking about as well on the vertical.

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And then the disciples are urged to have a higher kingdom aspiration. Jesus says to his horizontally focused disciples at that time in verse 35, lift up your eyes and look at the fields for they are already white for harvest.

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Lift up your eyes, look at the fields for they're already white to harvest.

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You see, the disciples were about to enter into a spiritual harvest right there in Samaria. It was a place that the disciples themselves had never sown themselves any gospel seed.

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The Old Testament prophets sowed gospel seed in Samaria centuries before.

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John the Baptist had sowed gospel seed there in Samaria. And now Jesus was sowing gospel seed in that area.

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We see it in our story. And now the disciples were going to have the privilege of reaping a gospel harvest in Samaria, a place where they had never sown the gospel seed.

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They had that privilege. And Jesus said to them, lift up your eyes. I think he wanted them to literally do that.

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Because in verse 30, in verse 30, we're told that all the men of the city were marching out to the place where Jesus and his disciples were.

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You know, if I were a cinematographer, I would shoot that scene. If I were to make this scene into a movie,

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I would have Jesus facing the city and his disciples facing him with their backs to the city.

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And Jesus saying the words that he says. And then he says, lift up your eyes. The harvest is coming.

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And I would have the eyes of the disciples turn around and follow his finger behind them.

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And they would see a great cloud of dust coming up from the city of the men coming out ready, primed in their hearts because of what

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God had been doing there and what had happened that day. Of the testimony of the Samaritan woman going back into the city and said, is this the

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Christ who knows every, who's just been telling me about my whole life? Could this be him? He's just right out there on the outskirts of the city.

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Why don't you guys go speak with him as well? And they're all coming out. And Jesus says, get your eyes up, guys.

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Get your eyes off of the horizontal. The harvest is right there. It's coming. You've never sown, but you're about to reap with me.

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I think Christ is saying that to us as well. These are words that our

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Lord has for us as well. They should be ringing in our ears.

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Lift up our eyes to the fields for they're already white to harvest. Do Jesus' words grip us?

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Or are we like the disciples so preoccupied on the horizontal concerns of life? What harvest of souls is just before you right here in Lakewood, here in the

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Silicon Valley? And Jesus is saying to you as a church, lift up your eyes.

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I'm about to do something here. And you're going to be a part of it. Be engaged in it. You know, brothers and sisters, you have sent us on mission for 20 years.

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And sure, we're 20 years behind the rest of the Bay Area economically, but who cares? We have seen with our own eyes the work of Christ in the big country in Asia and in Malaysia.

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We've been to Brunei at the height of Ramadan. We've been to Singapore to see what the

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Lord is doing there. We've been to the Philippines. I was preaching, by God's grace, had an opportunity to work with HeartCry Ministries in Nepal to see what the

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Lord is doing in Nepal. With our very own eyes, we've seen the harvest, white unto harvest to be reaped.

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And people are reaping. And it's been a wonderful privilege. We want to be there still, but duty calls us back here.

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And I trust that Christ is not finished with the Western world. People are being saved here.

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I know he's not finished with it, though a lot is happening. You know, the greatest growth in the church is not happening here in the

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West proportionately. It's still happening by God's grace, but it's happening in three major areas of the world right now,

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Asia, South America, and Africa. The greatest inflow into the kingdom of God are happening on those three major blocks right now in this particular era.

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That may shift. In fact, people from those places are sending missionaries here to the

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West now. It's amazing. It's an exciting work that Christ is doing, and we need to be involved wherever we're at.

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If duty calls us to stay here domestically, stay here. The world is coming to us, especially here in the

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Bay Area. It's exciting. You know, I have an opportunity, as some of you have read our recent newsletter, the

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Lord has provided me work with a Christian school here. And you know what

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I get to do there and I get paid for? I get to teach the Bible to sixth graders and ninth graders.

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And some of my ninth graders are like, I don't know if some of you remember that 1970s sitcom show called

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Welcome Back, Cotter. Ah, some laughs here. Some of you remember that. And there was a group of folks that he worked with.

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What did he call them? The sweat hogs. Well, some of my students are reminiscent of those folks.

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But you know, God has developed in my heart a love for them because some of them are of, you know,

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Caucasian background from this country. Some of them are Chinese American. Some of them are new immigrants.

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They're coming from all over. And I have an opportunity to minister to them and have small groups with them.

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And then to teach them some other things as well. And many of you do as well. So keep it up, the work that you're doing here in this church, in reaching the nations as they come to you.

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And then third and finally, and ever so quickly here, thirdly, Jesus reaps the harvest.

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Verses 39 to 42, the end of our passage. The despised mixed breed of Jewish Gentile Samaritans are coming to Christ.

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Imagine yourself as a disciple at that very scene. All these former enemies, the despised

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Samaritans. Before your very eyes, God is awakening their dead souls.

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And he's giving them a new saving faith in Jesus Christ. Imagine if you were there, if we were there to see that.

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And for we ourselves to hear with our own ears, now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard him.

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And we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world. How thrilling that would be.

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How thrilling that would be. Jesus is reaping a harvest of souls in an unlikely place among the

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Samaritans. And the disciples have the privilege to be right there with their master reaping that harvest.

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In our hearts, who are our Samaritans? People of a certain place, people of a certain social class, people of a certain ethnicity?

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Could God be reaping a harvest of souls to Jesus among our

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Samaritans? And he wants us to be part of it? We have to ask ourselves those questions.

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And so we've taken a look at Jesus sowing the gospel. Secondly, Jesus inspiring his disciples.

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And then thirdly, Jesus reaping the 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

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Samaritans. I believe Jesus is doing something in preparation for what's ahead of them and what's ahead of the church.

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Jesus is getting them prepared because the church was entering into a time of worldwide mission, of worldwide salvation work.

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And later in a few years, Jesus would tell them more clearly of his global mission when he said to them in Acts 1 verse 8, but you shall receive power when the

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Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you shall be witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all

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Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. May our hearts, brothers and sisters, look to always partner with Jesus in reaching people from all over the world.

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Amen. Let me close this in a word of prayer, please. Father, we thank you for sending your son.

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And we thank you that in your sovereignty, you awakened our hearts to know our sins, but more importantly, to know of the true

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Savior, Jesus Christ. We thank you for your son. We thank you for the ongoing work our risen

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Savior is doing all over the world and right here in the Bay Area. Help us, Father, like the disciples, to be part of that work, that great harvest.

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We thank you for that privilege. Bless the church here to continue to do their work, the work that you've given them in this corner of your vineyard.