John pt 20 | John 4:25-45

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Covenant Reformed Baptist Church Pastor Jeff Rice

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All right, if you will take your copy of the scriptures, we'll be in the
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Gospel of John, chapter 4. We'll consider verses 24 through 45. Gospel of John, chapter 4, 25 through 45.
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I think I said that wrong the first time. 25 through 45. If you're using the
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Pew Bibles, it'd be on page 1 ,075, 1 ,075.
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Let me pray. Oh, Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, please, at this time, use me to speak forth your word.
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Lord, what I am about to read is your very word. And, Lord, what
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I've been asking all week and what I ask today is that you use my understanding to enlighten your people of what you have for us this day.
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And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. So the context of our verses is in the context of worship, right?
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Jesus has stopped at the well of Jacob. He is speaking to a
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Samaritan woman. And last week, we talked about worship, how
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Jesus was telling this woman how it is that we are to worship, and we saw that it was in spirit and truth.
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We saw that this worship was a Trinitarian worship, that we worship the Father in the
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Spirit, the Holy Spirit, by the truth of Jesus Christ. But also, as we are gathered here, we're in the
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Spirit of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that's in me is in you, right?
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The same Spirit that once tabernacled in tents and temples now tabernacles in us.
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And we're here today gathered to worship this triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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We have His Spirit in us, and we are here based upon the truth that's been revealed to us in Scripture that Jesus came down from heaven, takes on flesh, and He has revealed to us the
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Father. And so we're here gathered together in His name. Ladies and gentlemen, if we weren't gathered together in His name, if we didn't have this same
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Spirit, none of us would be hanging out, right? We're so different from one another, right?
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So we're here gathered together for one purpose, and that is to worship the
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Father in the Spirit and the truth that's been revealed to us. Jesus has revealed to us the
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Father, and God has revealed to us who He is in the person of Jesus Christ.
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And that's where our theme comes in right now. Our theme for today is evangelism.
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And if you could take last week's message and the message that we were looking at this past Wednesday concerning the attributes of God in today's message, it does not stop.
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The same theme runs along if you kind of look at the overarching angle of it.
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And my proposition for this Lord's Day is that evangelism is for all Christians, even if you become one today.
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And evangelism is a form of worship. So let me read that together.
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Evangelism is for all Christians, and evangelism is a form of worship.
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It's been said that evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where he found the bread.
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However, in the case of the Samaritan woman, it's living water, right?
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She found the living water. And she begins to speak to the fountain, the source by which faith,
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Holy Spirit, and eternal life comes from. So she goes in worship.
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She goes and she tells those that she knows of the one who knows all things.
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So in our outline today, I want us to see the cause of evangelism.
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The cause of evangelism is the reason, the purpose, the harvest, and the fruit.
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So four points. Point number one, the reason for evangelism. Point number two, the purpose for evangelism.
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Point number three, the harvest in evangelism. And point number four, the fruit of evangelism.
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And I believe in order for us as a church to get this right, it must be in this order, the order that's set forth for us as we find in this gospel.
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So point number one, the reason for evangelism, is going to be taken from verses 25 through 30, but we'll begin reading verse 25 and 26.
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So again, the gospel of John 4, look at verse 25.
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The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming.
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He who is called Christ. When he comes, he will declare all things to us.
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Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he.
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Now, right now, I want you to ask yourself a question. Seriously, I want you to ask yourself a question.
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Ask yourself, is Jesus the Messiah? Take a second.
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I'm serious. Ask yourself, is Jesus the Messiah?
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And if your answer is yes, because he is, if your answer is yes, if you answered yourself, yes,
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Jesus is the Messiah. Listen, then you have reason for evangelism.
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You have reason for evangelism. You have a reason to go out and evangelize.
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You have a reason to leave your comfort zone and proclaim the victory, that victory has come, and that the victory over death is here.
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That death has lost its sting, right?
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1 Corinthians 15, beginning in verse 54, says this.
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Speaking of a future, but when the corruptible puts on incorruptible and this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the words, the words that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.
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O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?
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Now, the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
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But thanks be to God, who gives us victory. This is right now.
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He gives us victory through Jesus Christ, our
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Lord. That since Jesus has come, death is a scorpion without a tail.
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For us, for believers, death is a scorpion without a tail.
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The power by which Satan possessed, according to Hebrews chapter 2, was death.
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And Hebrews chapter 2 tells us that Jesus disarmed him. Jesus disarmed him.
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He took his power from him. You say, well, Jeff, people are still dying. Yes, I get that.
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He disarmed him in such a way that those who are in Christ, this is the point, those who are in Christ don't suffer loss, but pass from death to life.
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The Bible doesn't call a Christian when he passes. It doesn't say that he experiences death. He sleeps.
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The Christian doesn't experience death. Yes, we die from this body, but we go into glory, the
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Bible tells us. Absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. If I fall down now, before my body hits,
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I'll be dancing with angels, right? That's the hope. If I die right now,
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I will be dancing with angels, and yet you will mourn. Like we said earlier,
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God does not delight in the death of the wicked because they experience death, but he delights in the death of the saints.
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When we die, we exit the body, we enter the presence of God, and for that, death has lost its victory.
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Therefore, since Jesus is the Messiah, we evangelize in order to remove our neighbors from the direct path of eternal death, right?
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They are parked on the train track of life and death.
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Hell and the grave is the train, and we're trying to move the vehicle off the track.
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How? By evangelizing. Him, Jesus, being the Messiah, is speaking of his
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Davidic kingship. Look at verse 25a. The woman said to him,
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I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called
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Christ. The words here, he who is called Christ, this is actually, in my
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Jewish Bible, it's translated the one who has been anointed.
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The one who has been anointed. Jesus being the
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Messiah, Christ speaking about him being the anointed king. That's what
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Messiah means. That's what Christ means. When you say Jesus is the Christ, you say Jesus is the king.
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He was the anointed king. That's what she's saying.
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We know that the one who is anointed is coming. We know that our king is coming.
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We're waiting for our king. The Greek word here for am,
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Jesus answers, and he says, let me continue reading that verse. And when he comes, he will declare all things to us.
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Jesus answered her and said, I who speak to you am he.
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So the Greek word here for he is emi or imi, depending on if you're from the north or the south, right?
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It's emi or imi. Now, because the Greek structure translators, in order to make this verse easier to read, they render it, they word it the way that we see it in our text.
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However, the Greek structure has it this way. I am he who speaks to you.
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So if you just line in word for word with the Greek, it's I am he who speaks to you.
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The Greek word here for I is ego. Put it together, I am, ego,
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I me. Ego and I me are not the same word, but they translate almost the same, right?
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And depending on the context, when the Septuagint was translated, that is the
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Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible in 3rd century BC, they translated
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Exodus 3, chapter 3, verse 14, concerning the name of God as ego,
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I me. I am, he says to Moses, you tell them that I am who I am, senshi.
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I am, ego, who I am, I me. Ego, I me.
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Now concerning our verse in chapter 26, theologians of our day, of the church, don't consider this to be an
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I am statement because of the structure. They say that there is eight
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I am statements in the book of John that seem to be directly applied to ego, I me from the book of Exodus and Isaiah, but not this verse.
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However, the messianic theologians seem to think different. They would say that there's nine
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I am statements and point to this verse as being the first one that gives us an answer for who
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Yeshua is. They say that this verse answers Yeshua's proclamation of his messiahship.
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They believe that this declares him as the I am, and it echoes his self -revelation.
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So which one's right? I don't know. I just want to give you the information. Now whether it does or it doesn't, we do know for sure that right here he is answering the woman about his messiahship, that this is actually pointing us back to John chapter three, beginning in verse 13.
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As Jesus is speaking to Nicodemus, he says to him, and no one has ascended into heaven, but he who descended from heaven, right here, the son of man.
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And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up.
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The son of man is a messianic title. When Jesus said that he was the son of man, he in turn is saying
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I am the king. I'm the messiah. I'm the Christ. I'm the anointed one.
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The son of man is a messianic title pointing to the kingship of Christ, Jesus Christ.
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Jesus proclaimed himself as the son of man when he said that. He says I am the messiah. I am the king.
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And he says to her, I am he who speaks to you.
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Think about that. As we transition, the Samaritans, they had the five books of Moses, right?
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We walked through that the last two times we spoke on this subject. They had those five books and maybe from those five books, from that Torah, maybe they were able to know that Jesus is, not that Jesus is the messiah, but that the messiah was coming.
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Now after this, perfect timing, after this, his disciples show up and they seem to be puzzled as to why he is speaking to a woman.
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Remember religious Jews do not speak to women in public and yet Jesus is doing that very thing.
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I told you if you were a religious Jew, you didn't speak to your wife, you didn't speak to your daughter, you didn't speak to any kind of woman in public.
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Jesus comes and he goes against that tradition. The woman here, in her excitement, leaves her water jar and she goes into the city to witness what just took place.
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And we read that in verses 27 through 30. And at this point, his disciples came and they were marveling that he was speaking, listen, with a woman and yet no one said, what do you seek?
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Or, listen, why are you speaking with her? It makes sense now when you read that.
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Why are you speaking with her? Because religious Jews did not speak to women. Verse 28, so the woman left her water jar and went away into the city and said to the man, come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done.
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Listen right here, is this not the Christ?
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And they went out of the city and were coming to him.
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Point number two, the purpose for evangelism. Let's continue our read from 31 through 34.
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Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat. But he said to them,
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I have food to eat that you do not know about. So the disciples were saying to one another, has anyone brought anything to eat?
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Has anyone brought him anything to eat? And Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
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Now, I think it's clear. This section is speaking about the will of God.
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That the food that Jesus had to eat was to do the will of God.
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And it's by finishing the work of God. There seems to be something about occupying oneself when it comes, with the things of God, when it comes to feeding and keeping you from hunger, right?
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Like when you're doing God's will, it blocks out the hunger pain.
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Many times in scripture, fasting is mentioned while including prayer, right?
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Prayer and fasting. It's almost impossible, if not impossible, to have a time, a long period of time of fasting without devoting yourself to prayer.
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The two go hand in hand. Try fasting without praying and see how long you'll last.
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Prayer to God replaces the pain of hunger. And listen, ladies and gentlemen, I've noticed this in ministry.
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I've noticed this while doing evangelism, while talking to someone, in a one -on -one conversation, going door -to -door, doing street preaching, or being up here behind the pulpit.
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That as I'm doing the will of God and preaching, I'm not hungry. I can't even smell the food, right?
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Y 'all out there starving, your taste buds going crazy while I'm up here for 45, 50 minutes.
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I don't feel any of that. Not to brag. But there's something about when you're doing the will of God that the hunger pain does not exist.
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Now, y 'all might be hungry. I'm up here, I'm just fine. But once I step down, I'm starving.
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But while I'm up here doing the will of God and preaching, I'm not hungry. When I'm out doing evangelism,
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I'm out there four or five hours. Sometimes I can't even eat lunch because I'm nervous.
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But I'm out there, and I'm doing the work of God, and man, I don't even think about food. There's something about occupying yourself with the will of God that keeps you from hungering.
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It satisfies those hunger pains. Now, how much more Jesus, right?
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How much more Jesus? And so let's look at some supporting verses.
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The Gospel of John 5 30. The Gospel of John 5 30.
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Jesus says, I can do nothing from myself. As I hear,
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I judge, and my judgment is righteous because I do not seek my, listen, own will, but the will of Him who sent me.
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Look at verse 36. But the witness
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I have is greater than the witness of John. For the works, for the works which the
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Father has given me to finish, talking about finishing the works, the very works that I do bear witness about me that the
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Father has sent me. Turn over to the next chapter, chapter 6, verse 38 through 40.
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Again, Jesus speaking. Listen carefully. He says,
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For I have come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.
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Now this is the will of Him who sent me, that all that He has given me,
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I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my
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Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life.
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And I myself will raise Him up on the last day.
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That goes back to that 1 Corinthians verse where we read that that's be that final day when we can say,
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Oh death, where is your victory? Even the bodies don't stay in the ground. One more, chapter 17.
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Chapter 17, verse 4. Jesus here still speaking. This is His high priestly prayer.
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He says, I glorify you on earth having finished the work which you have given me to do.
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And we know the work, right? It's the gospel. Jesus has to come. He has to live the life that we could not live and take the punishment that we deserve, be buried and rise on the third day.
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This is the work given to Him by the Father by which God reconciles the world to Himself.
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But also notice Jesus, when He is tempted, quotes from Deuteronomy. He says, Men do not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.
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The word of God. We have that word of God that this should be a feast.
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When we read our Bibles, we should think about it as a feast. I am feasting on the word of God.
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The food that Jesus is speaking about is doing the will of God. And let us remember what verse 4 says of chapter 4.
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So if you go to verse 4, chapter 4 says,
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He had to pass through Samaria.
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It was an appointed time for this woman to hear the word of God. Jesus was appointed before the foundation of the world to be by this well and to speak to this woman and for her to go and tell her community.
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That's what it says. And immediately after, He declares His Messiahship, Jesus being sent from heaven, we see again the humanity of Jesus.
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Just like earlier in this chapter, Jesus asked this woman for water, showing that He thirst.
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Now we see the two wills of Jesus. And ladies and gentlemen, if you do not believe that Jesus has two wills, we talked about this in Sunday school a few weeks ago, there's no way to understand the
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Gospels. There's no way to understand the Gospels. Jesus as deity, as God, has the same will as the
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Father. But Jesus as man submits His will to the
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Father. Concerning the crucifixion, the humanity of Jesus did not want to die on that cross.
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If it be your will, let this cup pass for me. But Jesus, the divine
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Son of God, was sent to experience the cross.
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And of that, He was willing. We can't let go of the two wills.
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We can't let go of the two natures of Christ. The two did not become mixed.
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It's not putting soda and water where the two come in and mix.
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Nor is it just 50 % one and 50 % of the other. We can't even understand what it means for the hypostatic union that Jesus be both truly
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God and truly man and truly have a will as a man and truly have a will as God.
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And if you don't understand that as you read the Gospels, you are going to be very confused.
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And as we transition in evangelism, proclaiming the kingship of Jesus Christ is the will of God.
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Is Jesus the Messiah? Yes. Then it's the will of God for you to proclaim that.
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Do you want to do the will of God? Then you are to evangelize.
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Again, what it looks like for me might not look what it looks like for you. But we are to evangelize.
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We are to go into the city and to tell the people about the man that knows everything. Point number three, the harvest in evangelism.
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It'll be taken from verse 34 and 35.
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Verse 34, Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.
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Verse 35, do you not say that there are yet four months and then comes the harvest?
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Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields that they are white for harvest.
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Jesus calls his disciples, those that have been following him, to lift up their eyes and to look.
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Where were they? In Samaria. He said, lift up your eyes. Look, the field is white for harvest.
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That means that someone has sowed the seed. He said the field is white for harvest.
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He wants them to see a field full of broken people who know that they are unrighteous and are waiting for the
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Messiah. That was the problem with Jerusalem. People didn't know that they were broken.
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They thought they were righteous. They thought they were keeping the law. They weren't ready for the
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Messiah. They were looking for the Messiah, but they weren't ready for the Messiah. He tells them that now that they're in Samaria to lift up your eyes.
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Right? The field is white for harvest. It's the will of God, we see this in Scripture, to reach the lost sheep of Israel.
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That's what the Gospels speak about. It's the will of God to reach the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
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That was the purpose of the prophets. But sadly, the
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Samaritans only had the Torah. They did not have the prophets.
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Remember that the Samaritans were half Jew and half Gentile, and they were a part of the ten northern tribes.
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They had been separated from their own people because of the sins of their fathers, and they're waiting, they're hoping for the
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Messiah to appear. The woman says that He will declare all things to us.
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Therefore, because they were waiting in anticipation, He tells
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His disciples to look up at the field, because it is white for harvest, meaning that the people are ready to receive the message.
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The problem with our day and time is that there is no anticipation for the
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Messiah. Right? That's what we're facing. We're speaking to a people where there's no anticipation for the
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Messiah. And there's no anticipation for the Messiah because the followers of the
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Messiah are not proclaiming to the people Messiah. Right? We live in a world where the church keeps the church in the building.
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They're not going out. Oh, you know, we Facebook, we have
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Christian television, but people are afraid to go and tell their neighbors about the man that knows everything.
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We have this woman who, in her shame and sin, and everyone around her knows her shame and sin, ran to the people to tell them about the man that knows everything.
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How can they anticipate? I might have said that word wrong.
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Anticipate, excuse me. How can they anticipate what they have not heard? How can someone be looking for something they have not heard?
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You see this in Romans 10, verse 14.
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How then will they call on him whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard?
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And how will they hear without a preacher, without someone telling them?
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Ladies and gentlemen, unbelievers do not make it a habit of just walking through a church, a
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Christian church, right? Unbelievers just don't make it a habit. Sometimes people invite unbelievers.
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You know, you have an unbeliever that you invite in the church, they come. But unbelievers don't wake up and say, you know what,
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I think I'm going to go to church. I'm just going to walk into a church building, see what they have to offer, right?
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That doesn't happen. It's been wrongly said that the church is a hospital for the broken, not a museum of good people.
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I'll say that again. It's been said that the church is a hospital for the broken, not a museum for good people.
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Ladies and gentlemen, both of those are wrong. It's not a hospital for the broken, and it's not a museum full of good people.
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The church is for the saints. It's for Christians to receive the ordinary means of grace, the preaching of God's word, fellowship, prayer, and the
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Lord's Supper. This is what the church is for. Why would we expect unbelievers to come and receive those things?
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We shouldn't. Absolutely not. The Great Commission was to go and make disciples, baptize them, and teaching them to observe all things.
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We go out. We preach the gospel. God sovereignly grants to them faith.
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Then they come to the church to be baptized, and then they sit under the word of God, and they're taught.
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We don't expect them to come in here to receive the ordinary means of grace.
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It's not for them. It's not for the unbeliever, but it's for believers.
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As we transition, Christians are to leave here from the church, and they are to take to the world this message of reconciliation.
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You say, what does that look like? We are to till the soil to sow the seed of the gospel.
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Picture farming. We are to till the soil to sow the seed of the gospel.
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He says that the field was white for harvest. Ladies and gentlemen, you look at our fields that we're in, it's not white because people have not been sowing the seed of the gospel.
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Our world is so hard to reach because the previous generation did not fulfill their part in the
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Great Commission. I'm convinced of it. They relied on Christian television.
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And if you watch TBN, like I used to, I think TBN has made more atheists than secular colleges.
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That false view of Christianity. We are to be tilling the soil to sow the gospel seed.
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Point number four, the fruit of evangelism, which is taken from verse 36 to 45.
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Read with me. Even now, Jesus speaking, even now, he who reaps is receiving wages, and he who gathers fruit for life eternal, so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
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For in the case of the saying is true, for in this case the saying is true, one sows, another reaps.
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I sent you to reap that which you have not labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.
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From that time, many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who bore witness.
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He told me all things that I have done. And when the
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Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
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And many believed because of his word. And they were saying to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this one is truly, listen, the
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Savior of the world. And after two days, he went from there into Galilee, for Jesus himself bore witness that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
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So he came into Galilee, and the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast, for they themselves also went to the feast.
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Now, my proposition for this message was evangelism is for all Christians, and evangelism is a form of worship.
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We gather together here to worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth.
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But we can apply what we do here. We can apply that worship, this worship, when we witness.
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A great way to worship is to take, remember, the knowledge of God.
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We're studying that on Wednesday night, to take the knowledge of the Father in the power of the
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Holy Spirit and in the truth of Jesus Christ to our neighbors. Again, I don't know what that looks like for you.
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We all have different ways that we can do this very same thing. Again, I mentioned, if you're a mother, homeschooling your children, right now your closest neighbor is your child.
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You raise up your children in the admonition of the Lord. That's evangelism. But ladies, listen, one day your child's going to grow up and leave the house.
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Then you have a different mission field, right? We all have a field. God has put us in a position.
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We have to figure that out. This is what we call it. This is a form of worship.
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That's what the woman did. That's what the woman did. Immediately, as soon as she got it, she left.
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This is the Christ. That's what she did. She went and told people who knew her best.
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Remember, who knew her shame about the man who she never met, who never met her, but knew everything about her, saying, is this not the
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Christ? And after spending time with Jesus and his disciples, many of the
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Samaritans believed the word that Jesus, of Jesus themselves.
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And they said that he is the savior of the world. Remember, this is a half Gentile, half
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Jewish people. This right here is pointing us back to John 3, 16. For God so loved the world.
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The word for word there, world there, is cosmos. It's not Oikomene.
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It's not Jerusalem. It's not just the Jews. It's for everyone, red, yellow, black, or white.
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We are precious in His sight. For God so loved all mankind that he sent his son,
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Jesus Christ. And whoever believes in him will not perish. That's what it means for him to be the savior of the world, not just to the
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Jews. But what's interesting, as I'm going through this,
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I found what's interesting is the process of how this comes to be. Jesus points it out in verses 36 and 38.
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36 through 38. Listen to this. He says, Even now he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal.
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Listen. So that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
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For in this case, the saying is true. Speaking about His disciples, what they're about to see, the one sows, one sows, and another reaps.
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I sent you to reap that which you have not labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.
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They are going to receive fruit that they did not sow. Now, of course, the
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Samaritans did not have the prophets, but they were a part of the ten northern tribes.
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Before the tribes were taken into Samaritan, I mean to Samaria, this northern tribes, they heard the prophets.
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The prophets were coming to them. Repent. Repent. Turn back to God. Stop worshiping false gods.
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Repent. They heard the prophets. And what
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I believe is going on here is Jesus is telling them, speaking to His disciples, He's telling His disciples, and He is giving credit to the prophets for being the one that tilled and sowed the seed.
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The prophets were the ones who tilled and sowed the seed that they are about to reap from, and that His disciples were reaping a harvest that was sown by the prophets when it was coming to them.
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Repent. Repent. Repent. Stop worshiping false gods. Stop sacrificing your children to Moloch.
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Repent. Turn back to Yahweh. Repent. They may not have had the whole
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Hebrew Bible, but I'm willing to bet you that they did have the oral traditions and the stories, even if they were mixed up.
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Like even if you had some stories mixed up here and there, they had those things. They knew that a Messiah was coming.
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They knew that someone was going to come who would be the king, who would be the anointed king, and He would come and He would declare to them all things.
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How did they know this? How was it they were anticipating this?
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When we look in front of us today, again, I said that's our problem.
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The field is not white because previous generations have not sowed the seed. It doesn't seem like the fields are white for harvest.
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But let me tell you what's out there. Listen, if you grab a hold of this, it'll begin to change things.
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I think this is what does it for me. There is a field, right?
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There's a field. And listen, there will be no fruit.
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There will be no fruit coming from that field if no one doesn't sow the seed of the gospel.
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You want this building filled in 10 years? You want to be able to plant, reform
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Baptist churches throughout Tennessee in 20 years? Someone's got to sow the seed.
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Someone's got to go out there and do the hard work now or there will be no fruit.
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Jesus not only died for our sins, according to the Scriptures, was buried and rose again on the third day, according to the
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Scriptures, but He also died for the sins of some of them as well. And I'm going to quote
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Haps Addison, who is also a member of Open Air Theology. They are elect people out in our area and they don't even know it.
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God has elected some of our neighbors and they don't even know it. And they won't know it till they hear the gospel.
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The reason for evangelism is that Jesus is the Christ. The purpose for evangelism is that it is the will of God.
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The harvest for evangelism is right before us. And the fruit of evangelism will only come when we open our mouth.
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Your leadership is available if you have any questions. Let's pray.
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Father, Lord, in Jesus' name, we ask for courage.
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We ask for boldness. We ask even when we are shaken that you will give us the strength to tell those about the one who knows all things.
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Lord, we love you. Please help us show love to our neighbors by removing them from the path of death.
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And Lord, we ask right now that you bless the supper, that you will use this bread and wine for our growing and holiness, for our being conformed into the image of your dear son.