The Eternal Priority Of The Gospel - [John 4:27-38]

You know, a few years ago, a friend of mine, many of you may know him, Tony Miano, really the man who introduced me to the

Lord Jesus Christ. He was doing some evangelism near the

Super Bowl. And I really, I wish I remember what town it was in, but what city it was in. They don't have them in towns,

I guess. What city it was in, but he was outside preaching. And I sensed that someone knew that Tony was physically hungry because they delivered some food to him, a wrapped, pristine burrito.

But they threw it in his face instead of handing it to him, which didn't seem the most kind thing. It wasn't actually then a gift,

I suppose. Why would somebody do that? I mean, you know, when

I go and buy a burrito, I eat it. And especially at the cost of, you know, most burritos.

And when you think about when the Super Bowl comes to your city, I'm sure the prices are inflated and whatnot. So, you know, what are we talking about?

Eight, nine dollar burrito? I'm not throwing that thing anywhere, you know, except for down my gullet.

That's...why would somebody do that? Because the gospel is offensive, makes people angry.

It doesn't make me angry. But this week, Tony was in London.

He was at Wimbledon. You know, when you think sporting events, you think television. When he thinks sporting events, he thinks,

I'm going to go preach. So he's over there on the streets. The video was posted.

You can watch it. He's in 2 Thessalonians 4.

He's calling people to sexual morality, as the Bible does.

And he talks about fornication and adultery and homosexuality. Well, some people were offended by this.

In fact, one woman, she looked perfectly pleasant until she walked up and saw Tony. And then she said something she ought probably not to have said to him and just kept going.

And he was like, well, you know, can we talk? And she just kept going. And I thought, well, that's it. You know, she just did a little drive -by insult and she's done.

Not really. Sometime later, she decided she was offended by what he was preaching. So she called the police.

The police came out and talked to Tony and said, are you preaching thus and such?

And he said, well, yes, I am. They arrested him for preaching the gospel.

Things are changing. So they take Tony to the station.

By the way, they didn't handcuff him. And I said, you know, I wouldn't, during my days on the street,

I wouldn't have taken anyone to jail unless they were handcuffed. But they just marched

Tony down. They didn't handcuff him or anything. And I just thought, okay, also if it was me, I'd probably be thinking, hmm, now would be a good time to escape.

Tony's just, you know, a godly man and went with the police. And they interrogated him.

They put him in a jail cell. He was in the jail for about six hours. And I don't know, you know, this probably doesn't happen to most of you.

I mean, look, if you're a preacher, what's your nightmare? Your nightmare is you wake up and, you know, your notes are blank, or you can't find your notes, or you can't find the pulpit, or whatever.

You know, I mean, you have that kind of nightmare. I guess, you know, different people, depending on their profession, they have different nightmares.

Well, I still have these, from time to time, these nightmares where I'm an inmate.

And I don't want anybody to know I'm a police officer. And I'll tell you what, I can wake up literally just sweating because I'm so afraid.

And so here's Tony being led to a jail cell. I'm just, I'm thinking, I'm going, I mean,

I just get this tense just even thinking about it. Because I don't know if you know this, probably most of you don't, but inmates don't like officers.

I know it's hard to believe. They like to do more than just throw a burrito at us.

And so they put Tony in that cell, and he went to sleep.

How do you go to sleep? I'd be like... Now, he was in a cell by himself, but I just can't even fathom that.

And he said the Lord gave him great peace, and I thought, okay, you know what? Why did you go to London in the first place?

To preach the gospel. The gospel was important to you. You were willing to undergo a burrito or what,

I guess, fish and chips in London, right? Throw fish and chips at you. Whatever it took to preach the gospel to people because they need to hear it.

And so if he's escorted to a jail cell, job done. I've done what

I came to do, not to get arrested, but to preach the gospel. My goal was to preach the gospel to lost people who need to hear it.

Job done. I can rest now. There's nobody to preach the gospel to in my jail cell. That's being sold out for the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Now, to invite you to open your Bibles to the gospel of John, we're going to see an invitation to do that, but we're also going to see somebody who's very excited about the good news.

Somebody who's very excited about the gospel. And to just catch us up, for some of you may not have been around for the last five years while I've been going through the gospel of John, one message every three or four months.

Of course, some of you I know have your notebooks where you've been, you know, painstakingly taking notes of everything

I've said. Not. But Jesus is presented in John's gospel not only as God, as the long -promised

Messiah, but John writes that he wants everyone who reads his gospel to believe in his person, all that he is, that he is the

Messiah, and that by believing in him, they would have eternal life. And so far in John's gospel,

I just made a list, just kind of going through the first three and a half chapters.

And all these things have been said already of Jesus, and probably a few more that I didn't even write down, that he's eternal

God, has no beginning and no end, that he's the creator, that he's the source of all truth, the source of all life.

The one who grants us divine adoption, gives us the right to be the children of God.

That he's the son of God, that he's the embodiment of the glory of God, that he's the lamb of God, the king of Israel, and by the way, the

Messiah rejected by his own nation. That he is one who is able to alter the rules of nature, in other words, perform miracles.

He's the one who claimed authority over the temple of God, that's why he cleansed it. The one who taught the most outwardly religious person there was, the teacher of Israel, that was in John 3 with Nicodemus.

And last week we saw that he taught the most outwardly sinful person that we've seen so far in this gospel, the

Samaritan woman. And he gave them both the same message, how they could be made right with God.

Now last week, as I said, we looked at the interaction of Jesus with the woman at the well, the

Samaritan woman, and this incident really is, or was an exposition about what it means that God so loved the world.

We see that in John 3 .16. Well, what does it mean that he so loved the world? We see it in John 4. God so loved the world that he didn't restrict his love to Jerusalem.

Jesus went outside of Jerusalem. He didn't restrict his love to Judea when he went out in the wilderness.

He sent Jesus into Samaria, the hated area, the hated people of Samaria.

In fact, last week I talked about the love of God and how it was extended to a sinful land, that is

Samaria, extended to a sinful woman, this woman at the well, extended via confrontation because he kind of opened the wound on her sin and he pressed in on it so that she understood her need.

And then finally, love extended via correction when he corrected her wrong belief system.

So again, I advise you to open your Bibles to John 4. We're going to read beginning in verse 27,

John 4 .27. Just then his disciples came back.

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

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.

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

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, has anyone brought something to eat, 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.

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

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

For here the saying holds true, one sows and another reaps.

I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered into their labor.

Now this morning, I'm going to declare five truths about the gospel of Jesus Christ, drawn from our text, so that you'll have a renewed sense of urgency about the necessity of proclaiming

Christ to unbelievers. I want us to think rightly that we have but one mission here, and that is to preach

Jesus Christ and him crucified. We need to be willing, with certain limitations, to take burritos, to be able to go to, or to be willing to go to jail.

Think about it, in writing this gospel, John proclaimed Jesus as the Messiah, as the Christ. In our text this morning, he proclaims the vital necessity of preaching the gospel to all people.

The fields are white, and we'll discuss that. But our first truth, the gospel is no respecter of persons.

We know from James that God is no respecter of persons. Well, his message, the gospel, is no respecter of persons.

It needs to go to everyone. Look at verse 27. Just then his disciples came back, and you say, well, just when and what does that have to do with respecter of persons?

We'll get to that. Just then, we'll look back at verse 25, and we'll see what just then refers to.

The woman said to him, I know that Messiah is coming. He who is called Christ. This is Samaritan woman of Jesus.

When he comes, he will tell us all things. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you am he.

So she had this background of being Samaritan. They had their own religious system based on the five books of Moses.

And she was looking forward to, like the Samaritans were, to a teheb, a prophet who would explain all things.

And Jesus says, I am the Messiah. I am the one that you're looking for.

And so it's just then, right at that moment, right as they're ending their conversation that the disciples come back.

They've been in town. They've been buying food. Jesus, if you'll recall, had become weary from the trip.

He was at the well. The woman comes along. And the disciples have gone into town to get food.

And so that's where we are. Now today, we really live in a world detached from so much of the,

I'll just use the modern term, anachronistically, the sexism that's so rampant here in the culture.

It's important for us to understand the culture, to have the right tools to understand what

John is trying to convey here, what we call authorial intent. We want to understand what

John is trying to convey. Look at verse 27, the second half of it. They marveled that he was talking with a woman.

The disciples, that is, marveled that he was talking with a woman. They were shocked, surprised. But no one said not so much that they questioned him.

What do you seek or why are you talking with her? Now, I gave you a taste last week of how shocking it was to have this dialogue with this

Samaritan woman. Now, for the ladies here today, I would just say, if you think you've ever experienced discrimination, sexism based on your gender,

I got some news for you. Here's the culture in which John was writing. This is from D .A. Carson. He says,

Some, though by no means all, Jewish thought held that for a rabbi, like Jesus, to talk with a woman, even his own wife, imagine what home life must have been here, to talk with even his own wife was at best a waste of time and at worst a diversion from the study of Torah, from the

Word of God. And therefore, potentially, speaking to a woman now, a great evil that could lead to hell.

Some rabbis went so far as to suggest that to provide their daughters with a knowledge of Torah, with the

Word of God, was as inappropriate as to sell them into prostitution. So there's a little bit of a bias here.

The disciples are therefore surprised. They know what the other rabbis say about speaking with a woman.

And here he is, not just speaking with a woman, but he's speaking to a Samaritan, someone of a people group that the

Jews did not like. They didn't like them for a number of reasons. First of all, because they were part

Jewish, part Gentile. They had a separate religious system that claimed to be based on Judaism, but it wasn't really.

And she was a woman. And women were held in very low esteem in the Middle Eastern culture.

She was also, as we said last week, a fornicator. She was living with a man. And her assorted history of five marriages, well, when you factor all that in, she was about as low on the social totem pole as you can get.

And here's Jesus talking to her, and they're like, why is he talking to her? Well, here's something that everyone here should remember, and the disciples should have thought of this.

She was what? She was an image -bearer. In her was the full image of God, just as fully born as in anyone.

She had a soul. And one day, she would have to stand before her Creator and give an account for her life.

And that day, in a seemingly random chance encounter, one that she certainly didn't plan, but the

Lord did, she came face -to -face with that Creator. The good news is, there's still time for her to repent, to hear the truth about Jesus, and to believe.

Now, how often, when you come across somebody that you don't really find particularly attractive, or you think, that person is beneath me, or different than me, or I immediately don't like them because of whatever appearance, or piercings, or I have to admit,

I'm not a big fan of multiple piercings, but do you ever think to yourself, no matter what they've done to themselves, no matter what sin they're involved in, this is an image -bearer?

This is no more or less a creature created by God than me, and one day, that person is going to have to stand before God and give an account for what they did with the

Lord Jesus Christ? Do you think about it that way? It doesn't matter what color they are.

It doesn't matter how they're dressed. Whatever sin may captivate them. Every single human being needs to hear the

Gospel. Isn't it amazing? Just a few weeks ago, and I'm not going to mention any names because I don't want to embarrass one of my son -in -laws.

We were driving into Boston, and there was an elderly gentleman.

We stopped at a red light. We're still in Worcester, but we stopped at a red light, and there was an elderly gentleman.

It took me, I have to just think about this. He was, now the curb, he was at the corner, and he was going to cross the street.

The curb was cut out, so it wasn't any big challenge to walk out on the street, but he was afraid.

He was afraid he was going to fall over. That was obvious in his body language, and this young man got out of our vehicle and walked over and helped that man across the street.

And I just thought, this is, if we think about it rightly, this is how we, not just helping someone like that, but if we value people rightly, this is how we'll think, this is how we'll act.

It's more important for me to help someone, to do something to either physically help or hopefully spiritually help that person, than it is to just think, you know,

I've got other things to do, we've got places to go, people to see. We need to put other people in front of ourselves.

We wouldn't, like that man there, we wouldn't just drive by him without wanting to do something, but how often is it that we'll just walk right by people that need the gospel without even thinking about it?

So the disciples were shocked, our text tells us, that he was talking with this

Samaritan woman because they weren't thinking rightly. It kind of took their breath away. It doesn't tell us how long they were shocked, but it seems to have been an extended period of time, that's the sense of it, grammatically speaking.

Why were they shocked? Well, because of who she was. But why did they wait?

Why didn't nobody say anything? Well, maybe they just wanted to wait until she left, but, you know, it would have been perfectly acceptable.

You think, well, maybe the disciples were too restrained, too refined to challenge

Jesus, but that wasn't the point at all. It would have been perfectly okay for them to ask Jesus, Master, Rabbi, Teacher, why are you talking to her?

That would have been perfectly acceptable, but they didn't even do that. They were just silent until she left.

Our second truth about the gospel, the gospel changes priorities. This is amazing to me, look at verse 28.

So the woman left her water jar and went away into town. Now consider this. A sinful woman went in the middle of the day to get water in the desert, and after a short conversation, she abandoned the very reason that she went.

She left her water pot, and she did something altogether differently than what she had planned, her water jar.

Does the gospel change lives? Do people respond after they hear the gospel, and do they do something differently than what they had planned?

Well, think about Peter. What was his goal? We don't know. Maybe he wanted to be the best fisherman ever in the history of Galilee.

Jesus comes along and he's done with that. What about Paul? Well, he wanted to be the biggest persecutor of the church in the history of the planet.

Saul of Tarsus. Christ changed all that, changed his priorities. I mean, if we look historically,

Martin Luther, John Calvin, both wanted to be lawyers. Other great historical figures,

Pastor Mike, medical supply salesman. The gospel changes our priorities, or it ought to.

Now, not everyone's life receives that kind of an overhaul, but something ought to change.

The things that seemed so important to us, that had such a great priority, now maybe don't seem so important.

Some commentators have suggested that the Samaritan woman forgot her water jar. Like, oops.

I think that's a bit silly. And really, it's not the word that's indicated, as we'll see here in a moment.

But here's a better understanding. I took this from Hendrickson. She comes to the middle of the day for water and fills her jar.

We got that so far. Jesus, sitting nearby, he's exhausted and thirsty, and he asks her for a drink.

She sees this stranger whom she recognizes as a Jew, and she knows that Jews do not drink from containers that are used by Samaritans.

So she asks for an explanation. In other words, it's going to defile you, according to Jewish teaching,

Jesus, to drink out of this water pot. Now, Jesus doesn't have anything to draw water, which is part of the reason he asked for it.

Another reason is because, again, as I said last week, this is something that would be considered the kind of work that women would do.

Sorry, this is the culture. But they talk, Jesus and this woman, and she becomes convinced that she's spoken to the

Messiah. So she leaves the jar so that he may drink, and she rushes back to her village.

Now, the text could use, John could have used the word for forgot.

There is a Greek word for forgot, but precisely, he uses precisely the same word that's used in John 4, 3, where it says that Jesus left

Judea. Jesus didn't forget Judea. He left it.

He purposely left it when the Pharisees were becoming concerned, when he finds out the Pharisees are becoming concerned, because more people are coming to him than are even going to John the

Baptist. So they're like, okay, we need to find out about this guy. And Jesus knows it's not time for a confrontation, so he leaves.

So this woman, this Samaritan woman, was simply going through her humdrum, mundane, everyday work.

This was her routine. This is what she would do, is go get water every single day. But after speaking with Jesus, she has a paradigm shift.

Her life changes. We'll see how in just a moment. But our first truth was the gospel is no respecter of persons.

It needs to go to everyone. And secondly, the gospel changes priorities. And look, third, the gospel motivates action.

Look at verse 28, the second half of it. She goes into the town, and she said, and said to the people, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did.

Can this be the Christ? They, being the people in the village, went out of the town and were coming to him.

So the Samaritan woman leaves the well, and she goes into town. I recently had somebody tell me, you know what, this text doesn't explicitly say that the

Samaritan woman got saved. And I think, well, you know what, that's true. It doesn't say that she believed on the

Lord Jesus Christ, and he said, you know, welcome to the family of God, all the things that people like to do. He didn't give her the sinner's prayer or anything.

But I'll tell you this. Her response is something

I wish more Christians would employ. If she wasn't a believer at this point, I'd like to see this kind of excitement from more

Christians. I think too many Christians are what we might term lamp hiders.

You know, you don't hide your lamp under a bushel. Well, lots of Christians do. The undercover Christians, they don't want anybody to know.

That's not her, though. What does she do? She leaves the jar, she runs into the town, and guess what?

She says, come see a man. Now, I want you to, for just a moment, think about all the sins that you've committed since you woke up this morning.

For those of you who think you haven't committed any sins since you woke up this morning, repent. Now, if you add those to the sins that you committed yesterday, etc.,

etc., etc., pretty soon you'd come to a pretty impressive total. And you're probably understating it by a fair margin.

Now, think about this. Jesus died for every single one of those sins.

What did Peter say when Jesus asked him? He said, you know, which do you suppose loves more, the one who is forgiven a little or the one who is forgiven much?

And Peter says the one who is forgiven much, and that's right. The more we have sinned, the more excited we ought to be.

And I think this Samaritan woman gives evidence that she's very excited. And look at what she does here.

I think it's very clever. She's known in that town. They know what kind of person she is.

They know where she ranks on the social totem pole, as it were. So what does she do?

She doesn't hide her sins. She just goes, come see a man that told me everything

I ever did. What does that do?

It kind of diffuses the whole, why should we listen to you? Because she's like, he told me. He told me everything

I've ever done. So she's able to just kind of dispense with that argument, why should we listen to you?

There's no reason for you to listen to me. I'm nobody, but he knows everything that I've ever done. And secondly, she puts the information, the last part of it, in the form of a question.

Right? It's kind of like Jeopardy, Alex Trebek, in the form of a question. She says, can this be, this man who knows everything, can he be the prophet?

Can he be the Messiah? And they don't ignore her. Why? There could be a lot of reasons.

But for one thing, they know enough about her to recognize that anyone who knows all about her history has to possess some kind of divine insight.

So they go out to investigate, and they're excited to go investigate. And the English text here really doesn't do justice to kind of the picture of what's going on.

It says, you know, they went out to him. How does it exactly get phrased?

They're just going out to him. But the picture here is of a constant surge of people going out to see

Jesus. So it's like as word spreads through the town, more and more people go out to see him, and it's just a long stream of people going from the village out to see

Jesus out by the well. Our fourth truth is the gospel is timely.

It is timely. Verse 31 says, Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him, saying,

Rabbi, eat. Now remember why Jesus stopped by this well in the first place.

It was because he was tired and thirsty. So his disciples had gone into the town to get food.

So it's no stretch of the imagination to suggest that if he was tired, he was thirsty, and he'd been there for a while while they went in and negotiated some food, that he was probably hungry.

So then they return, and he says, well, let me rephrase that.

The Samaritan woman leaves. They're stunned. They can't speak, or they don't speak for a minute or two, and then she's gone, and so they just focus now on his physical needs.

Why? Because they know why he stayed there, or at least they know, or they think that they know.

But as happened with Nicodemus, who got confused by the words of Jesus.

Remember, Jesus said to him, you must be born again, and Nicodemus took it literally and said, what am I supposed to do, go back inside my mother's womb?

The Samaritan woman took his words with a crass literalism.

He says, I'll give you flowing springs of water, and she's like, there's no spring around here.

How are you going to do that? The disciples aren't any smarter here. Jesus says in verse 32, but he said to them,

I have food to eat that you do not know about. Now, like maybe

I would, they're thinking that he's got some stash of food, maybe some beef jerky, something like that.

Look at what they say. Verse 33. So the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him something to eat?

In other words, well, maybe while we were out, we went out and suffered, and we did the work, and we got the food, and what?

He called for delivery in the middle of the desert. Who knew you could get delivery? Has anyone brought him something to eat?

They're thinking he's talking about literal food. And of course, they missed the point. But he goes on to explain it.

Look at verse 34. Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.

As he would do many times, Jesus makes it plain that the focus of his life was to do the work of the father, the will and the work of the father.

The father sent him into the world, and the father gave him work to do. In fact, just as a footnote, what did

Jesus say? One of his dying statements was what? It is finished.

Well, that word finished is the same word here. God gave him work to accomplish, he says here.

He could say to finish because it's the same word. He could have said in English, it is accomplished.

From the beginning of his ministry to the end of his ministry, his concern was on doing the will of the father, finishing the work, finishing the task that the father had given him.

That was his food. That was his sustenance. That was his mission in life. Now, it's a curious saying here in verse 35.

Do you not say, there are four months, there are yet four months, then comes the harvest.

There are two camps on this, and I'm going to tell you the truth. Ultimately, it doesn't really matter. Some commentators say it's a proverb.

Some, you know, in other words, they base that on the kind of meter of it and that it's poetic in the

Greek. Then others say, well, this is just a, this is just a truism.

This incident may have occurred in December, and in April, there would have been a harvest. And so that's the principle he's bringing out, that four months after this date, there would be a harvest.

It ultimately doesn't matter. Why? Because he's using a real world example to illustrate a spiritual point.

And there's a spiritual reality that's unfolding right in front of the disciples. Look at verse 35.

The second half of it. Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes. He's talking to the disciples.

And see that the fields are white for harvest. Now, let's just think back a second. What's going on?

The Samaritan woman, what? She went into the town. She told the people.

And the people are coming out. They're in a constant action of coming out.

There's a steady flow of people coming towards Jesus. And he says, look at that steady flow. Look at these people coming from the village.

We don't have to wait four months. The harvest is coming to us. In fact, most commentators believe that the already in verse 36 belongs with verse 35, so that it would be the fields are already white for harvest.

It's already ready. Look at them just coming. A long train of people coming out to find out about this man.

That's what she called him, this man. In the physical world, we're used to having to wait.

Of course, you know, waits get shorter now. People are upset if they have to wait any amount of time for anything because we're used to microwaves and computers.

And, you know, I mean, heaven forfend if you have to wait, you know, two seconds for your

Google results. The physical world and the spiritual world don't always happen the same way.

We can't expect, you know, that kind of flow of people to come to us. I mean, think about this.

Are there people that you've been praying for to be saved for months or years? And we think it's been so long.

Ultimately, though, we don't know who's close to being saved. We don't know who's far from being saved. We don't know who we'll never believe.

What we do know is this, that there's an uncountable number of souls who will be in heaven.

And you know what? The truth is that as we go about our daily lives, we're surrounded by some of them.

They don't know they're going to heaven yet. We don't know they're going to heaven yet because they need to be told about the

Lord Jesus Christ. They need to hear the gospel and the time is now. Why don't we see that the fields are white for harvest?

Why do we hold back the gospel? Why do we hide our lamp, as it were, under a bushel?

The need is urgent. We need people willing to go out, take burritos in the face, go to jail for the cause of the gospel.

Truth number one, the gospel is no respect to our persons. Number two, the gospel changes priorities. Number three, the gospel motivates action.

Number four, the gospel is timely. Number five, the gospel rewards those who proclaim it.

It rewards those who proclaim it. Look at the text, verse 36. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together.

What happens when a believer leads someone to Christ? Is there joy? Yes. Is there a reward?

Yes, you feel great. You love that. And I don't care how often it happens.

If you play any part in somebody coming to Christ, it's exciting. You ever think, well, you know,

I was the first person to preach the gospel to that person, then someone else got to, you know, watch them actually believe.

Someone else was with them when they prayed the prayer, walked out, whatever. When they actually made a profession of faith that seemed to matter.

And you just think, boy, I wish I would have been there. I wish I could have. I wish I've never felt that way.

You know why? Because it's just exciting that somebody got saved. Someone plants, another one sows.

Everybody who participates in it has a joy that is indescribable. Now, let me just put it another way.

Let's think about this. Talking about the eternal perspective. If, you know, what are the most amazing achievements in human life?

I don't know. You know, off the top of my head, maybe getting elected president, winning the Nobel Prize, getting a World Series ring.

What else? You know, being drafted by the Celtics would be huge. Maybe. Whatever it is, all those great accolades and awards and things that so people so prize.

You know, we talk about riches not going with you to heaven. Well, think about it. When a former president gets to heaven, do you think they say,

Well, thank you, Mr. President. It's a real delight to have you here. Nobody cares. That's done.

That's over. That's finished. There's no glory in any achievement that's accomplished on earth, but there's joy over one accomplishment.

Whether you sowed or you reaped, you are earning something that cannot be taken away and will not fade away.

In a farming situation, the one who sows is typically also the one who reaps.

You plant, and then later on you'll reap. But in evangelism, it may be that those are two separate actions.

It could be that that woman who heard Tony proclaim the gospel will at some point down the road get saved.

Will Tony think, Boy, I wish I could have been there for that? Or will he think, You know, I thank God that he would save her and that in any way my preaching had some influence on that.

In evangelism, in gospel labor, the sower and the reaper rejoice together. They are rowers in the same boat.

They are co -laborers. They are shoulder to shoulder. They have, as Pastor Dave likes to say, they've locked shields.

And Jesus explains further. Look at verse 37. For here the saying holds, one sows and another reaps.

I sent you to reap for that which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.

Now, there are two things going on here. I think there's an immediate context and a bigger context.

In the interest of time, I'm just going to sort of move this along here. The immediate context is what?

They had nothing to do with that woman going into the town. They were in the town. They were buying.

Jesus talks to her. She goes into the town. And now look what's happening. All these people are coming.

In a bigger context, we need to go back to the last chapter. But just think about this.

Here's John the Baptist preaching, being persecuted already, but baptizing people and having his own disciples and everything, and really preaching what?

A gospel of repentance, saying the religious order that you understand is not enough to get you into heaven.

You need to believe on the Lamb, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. And now think, let's just fast forward a little bit.

The Lord's crucified. The Lord's resurrected. The Lord goes up into heaven. What do the apostles do?

They're out there preaching and teaching. And guess what they're doing? They are building on the work of another in this sense.

They're building on the work of John the Baptist. He's the one who kind of got a lot of people thinking in the first place that there needed to be something beyond this works righteousness system that Judaism had turned into.

Now, one of the most common prayer requests, I mean, whenever Christians get together, what do they pray for?

They pray for salvation of others. And I think we all have relatives and friends and loved ones that we'd like to see get saved, whether it's in fact a family member or spouse or child.

It's painful to think of someone we love spending eternity in the wrath of God, right?

Enduring the wrath of God. But every single person that we meet is what?

Every person that we walk by is what? Somebody's spouse, child, parent, and also an image bearer, someone that needs to hear the gospel.

Now, again, we should want even people that we don't like, maybe some people that we think of as our enemies to go to heaven.

If we think about it this way, you know, as I said, if we just kind of calculate our sins, we'd be amazed at the grace of God.

But how about this? Before you were saved, were you God's friend? No. So if there are people that you don't like, well, the

Bible says that they're God's enemy until they get saved. But in light of the grace of God toward you, his enemy, now his friend, how can you not want

God to be gracious even to people that you don't like? If we just put it in this context, what sort of person after they have life -saving surgery would want to deny that surgery to someone else?

No one would. Well, you've undergone something more important than life -saving surgery.

You've received a new heart, new desires. How can you not want other people to do that?

And there's only one way that that's going to happen. They have to hear the gospel. They have to hear about Jesus Christ.

They have to hear about him crucified. Again, when

I think about Tony in that jail cell, I think this is a man who has entered into his master's rest.

He was verbally assaulted. He was arrested. He was jailed.

And he went to sleep. Why? Because they were all minor inconveniences, trifles.

Gladly suffered to preach the gospel to those who need it most, even those who revile us, reviled

Tony. Even those who don't know that they need to hear the gospel. They need to undergo, really, a conviction of sin.

And I think that's what happened to this woman. She hasn't gotten to this stage yet. They need to be broken over their sin.

Then they need to be presented with a savior, told of his resurrection and the hope that they have.

And, you know, I just think, what happened to that Samaritan woman when he said, oh, you're right in saying you don't have a husband.

You've had five and the one you live with now is not your husband. She said, sir,

I perceive that you are a prophet. She knew right then that this was no mere man.

We need to be about proclaiming Jesus Christ and him crucified. Our lives need to be turned upside down by this truth.

Let's pray. Father, we just praise you for the truth that Jesus Christ died for people like us, that you raised him on the third day, that he sits in glory now at your right hand, that he intercedes for those whom you've called.

Lord, give us a burden, just a desire, not for people that are lovely, not for people that we like, but for everyone around us, knowing that the only hope people have is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Father, would you so transfix us by your grace that we cannot help but speak of it, that we cannot help but testify that we would, as it were, run to the village to proclaim about this man who knows everything about us and yet died for us, that we might be forgiven of our sins.