And turn with me to John chapter 4. John chapter 4. This will be our third Lord's Day in this same passage of scripture. It's a long narrative, and there's a lot there. And I think this will be our final Lord's Day here. We'll move on next week. But I'm going to read John chapter 4, verses 1 all the way through verse 42. follow along with me. This is the word of the Lord. Now, when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself did not baptize but only his disciples, he left Judea and departed again for Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria, So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give me a drink. For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria? for Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. Jesus answered her, if you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, give me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. The woman said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw water with and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself as did his sons and his livestock. 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. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water, welling up to eternal life. 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. Jesus said to her, go call your husband and come here. The woman answered him, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, you are right in saying I have no husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship. Jesus said to her, woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the father. You worship what you do not know. We worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the 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. 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. Jesus said to her, I who speak to you and he. 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 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 that 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. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. 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. 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 savior of the world. Let's go to God in prayer. God, we thank you for this wonderful Word that we've had the great privilege of looking at for three Lord's Days now. We thank you, Lord, that you are the Savior of the world, that you have come to give us living water that will well up inside us to everlasting life. We thank you, God, that you meet us in our dirtiness and our filth and our shame, Lord, and that you redeem us and save us and restore to us the relationship that we have broken. God, we ask your blessing on this time now of the ministry of the word. God, I ask that you would just be with me as I preach. God, let me stay true to your word. Lord, give me unction from on high. Lord, let me speak by the power of your spirit, Lord, and let your word and your truth penetrate to the consciences of each person here. Lord, if there is someone here who is not drunk freely of the living water that Christ is offering this Samaritan woman and indeed all of us, Lord, I pray. that they would drink deeply today. Lord, that you would open up a well inside them, springing up to everlasting life. God, I pray that you would just be with us now, that you would minister to our hearts. Lord, if I begin to say something that's going off course or that's contrary to your gospel, I pray you would correct me. Lord, that you would divert me, that you would make me stay true to your word here. God, we just ask your blessing now in Christ's name. Amen. You may be seated. Our first point today that I want us to look at as we're looking again at this wonderful story of Jesus meeting a Samaritan woman at the well is the superiority of the spiritual water. the superiority of the spiritual water. We are so accustomed in our day and age to have water readily available from just about anywhere we want that we may not realize how important this ability to draw water daily from Jacob's well was for these Samaritans, how important water was and knowing where you were gonna get your water from and ensuring you got your water each day, such an important thing for ancient people. We today, however, we are so confident that we will always have access to cold, clean water no matter where we go, that we will get in a car. We will drive on a road that we've never been on before, trusting a little device mounted to our dashboard to tell us where to go. It'll be the dead heat of summer and we will go without any water. And we will have full confidence if we get thirsty, we can stop somewhere and get some, whether it be a gas station or a restaurant or just about anywhere, we'll know that we can get water. Well, this most assuredly was not the case in ancient times. Water was really a highly valued resource and villages would often have to share just one well between everyone. There was no modern well digging where they could go a thousand feet down with high powered drills and find a well just for your house to make sure you always have a supply of water. No, everyone had to share this water. And so, Every day, people would go to the well and they would draw the water that they need for that day for drinking, for cooking, for bathing, whatever it was. And just as we've looked at three Lord's days now, every day, this Samaritan woman would come to the well. She came to sustain her life and the life of her pretend husband who was living with her and possibly some family members or friends as well. But every day, the Samaritan woman comes to the community well in the middle of the day to get water. And she comes during the middle of the day because she wants to avoid the crowds. She wants to avoid the whispering and the stares of the other women who knows her scandalous past. And normally, I think we can safely assume she is there alone and she likes that. But to her surprise, when she gets to the well today in our text here in John 4, she isn't the only one there. And it's not just another woman from town either. In fact, she realizes that at the well, she meets the long-awaited Messiah. And he calls her to himself, and he gives her the gift of everlasting life. And once she has that gift, which Jesus calls the living water of salvation, once she has that gift freely given to her by the Messiah, by Christ, our text tells us here in verse 28 of John chapter four, that the woman left her water jar and went away into town. that which was of such great importance and concern to her before her conversion to Christ. It almost mattered nothing at all to her once she had tasted and seen that the Lord was good. that which she had been doing most likely six days every week or perhaps even seven days every week without fail for who knows how many years, the task which she had to perform every day to sustain her life, going to get water from the well, she leaves totally forgotten. That most valuable resource that was carefully stewarded by the elders of that town, which ancient people unlike us did not take for granted, It was abandoned completely for something far greater. Now, of course, she did go back to the well in time, and she did get regular water at some point to provide for her daily needs. But for now, the water from Jacob's well didn't matter to her, not during and after this conversation, because she had drunk freely from the well of Christ, and that water had become in her a well of living water, springing up to everlasting life. After this meeting with Jesus, the focus for this woman would no longer be on earthly things. And clearly, earthly things had been her main concerns before this time. She was a Samaritan. The Samaritans were a people who did not worship God according to His commands. They were earthly. They were half or quasi-pagan people. They were outside of God's gracious covenant. She was a woman who had been married five times and was now living with a man who was not even her husband. So this shows us also not only was she earthly minded because of her religious and cultural background, but even if she was sinned against greatly by all six of these men and Even if she was to some extent not at fault for some of these sinful relationships, she most certainly was looking first and foremost to worldly ways of making sure her needs and desires were provided for. But now that she had met Christ and received the living water, she was not anxious over the normal, everyday things of the world anymore. She had now set her mind on things above rather than below. She was a heavenly-minded woman now. Now, this doesn't mean that after this conversation with Jesus at the well, the Samaritan woman would no longer draw water, because that was beneath her. That was just earthly, worldly things. It doesn't mean that she no longer cooked food or tended to the bodily needs of herself and others. In fact, it probably means she did all of those things with greater care and joy and diligence than she had before, maybe when it was just a meaningless chore. But God has ordained that when earthly things are not our primary focus, and when we don't put our identity in these earthly things, and when we don't spend our energy being anxious over earthly things, that we are freed from the stranglehold that those earthly things often have on us in our flesh. For the Christian whose eyes are fixed on Christ, earthly things simultaneously become less important and infused with greater meaning because of the greater purpose which they serve. To the mom who has cleaned up 10 cups of spilled milk in one day, if you begin to think that your main goal is to keep a clean house, and to make sure you don't waste money on food and drink, then you will get frustrated and anxious over that spilled milk and you will get angry each time it spills again and again. But if you keep reminding yourself that each time that cup tips over, It's because you have an image bearer of God that you have been given the great privilege of raising to know and love the Lord and that you have a job of raising an immortal soul and you glorify God by doing that job. Well, I think it probably becomes a little easier to clean up those spills. It's infused with greater meaning. If you are a young man or a young woman and you're working at your studies and you have to do another math worksheet that you really don't want to do because you are not into this math worksheet right now, or you have to read another book that your mom or your dad assigned you, and frankly, you don't want to read another book right now. You'd rather play outside. If you remind yourself and step back for a moment and think, What am I doing here in school? Well, I'm seeking to love the Lord with all my mind and to learn how his world works so that when I grow up, and even now when I'm still a child, I can serve my neighbors through meaningful vocation and I can rightly worship my God with a zeal informed by knowledge. Well, then that math worksheet or that book becomes a little less meaningless in your mind. If you're a man who watches the stock market every hour of every day or even every day of the week, you can begin to get anxious over each rise and dip that the market takes. And you have that infinite feed of news on the TV and on your phone, the never ending scroll that just tells you how you're supposed to feel up and down, up and down. But if you remember that money is not your master, for you cannot serve two masters, but it's only a tool to help you do your heavenly master's work while you're here on earth. Then you won't allow the market to determine your outlook on life. Jesus says, do not be anxious about your life. Don't be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink. Don't be anxious about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? He says, look at the birds of the air. They neither sow nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you, Jesus says, by being anxious can add a single hour to your life? For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Jesus says if you seek first and foremost to be about the work of God's kingdom, then he'll take care of your earthly needs. If you're seeking first the living water, then he'll take care of that physical water. If your highest priority is earthly things, like many, many people in our world, then not only will you miss out on the glories of heaven, but often you actually miss out on those earthly things too. And all the promises that you think the earthly things we're gonna give you of happiness and contentment and peace, you don't get a single one of them. Now, this does not mean, of course, that once you're saved, once you're in Christ, you spend all your time in prayer and Bible study and evangelism, and you trust that God will provide you with food through miraculous means. That's not what that means at all. But it means that when you're in Christ, your eyes are lifted heavenward. And as you go about your daily task, you realize both that God provides all that you need without you slavishly and anxiously fretting over everything. And that you can even through the seemingly mundane tasks of this life, such as putting on clothes and preparing food and getting water for you and your family, you can aid in the advancement of the kingdom of God. Though the Samaritan woman came to the well expecting to draw her daily water for herself and for her pretend husband, she instead was giving this everlasting water that she then was able to share, not just with this man that lived with her, but with the entire town. And the water from Jacob's well, well, for a time it was forgotten. It was left behind because it paled in comparison to the living water that she had. Now that brings us to our second point today. The first point was the superiority of the spiritual water that we see here. And the second point, which is very similar, is the superiority of the Father's food. The superiority of the Father's food. Have any of you ever just been so into something that you're doing that you forget, you literally forget about your physical needs? Has anyone literally forgotten to eat a meal before because you were so zoned into a task you were working on? Maybe you're reading a book and it was just so good and you thought yourself, oh, I know it's getting late, but I'm just gonna stay up a little bit later. I'm gonna read for 20 more minutes, then I'm gonna put this down. And then you look over at the clock and it's 1 or 2 a.m. Has anyone ever done that? I think we have. Or maybe you're just cranking away at a project. Say you're building a new railing on your deck out back or you're finally cleaning out that closet or that back room that you've said for years, I'm gonna clean that out when spring comes. And you're finally cleaning it out now. And then one of your kids comes up to you and says, mommy, daddy, when are we gonna have lunch? You think, Lunch, we just had breakfast. What do you mean? Like, be patient. And then you just happen to look down at your watch and think, oh, it's already noon. Where did the time go? I think that most of us have had an experience somewhat similar to those things before. We've been so into something, so focused on something that we've forgotten about our earthly needs for the time being. We have left the water pot at the well, we could say. But usually when we get drawn back into reality, we think, oh man, I really need to go to sleep, otherwise I'm gonna regret this in the morning. Or I, okay, yes, lunch. I gotta dial in here. I'm gonna run in the kitchen and make some sandwiches. You get the drinks and the silverware and set everything at the table and we'll get this knocked out. Even if we don't in the moment want to drop what we're doing, we realize it's time to hit the pause button and attend to some other important things going on here. Now, I bring that up because that's similar in a way to what's happening with our Lord here in verses 32 through 34 of John 4. But I also bring up those examples to show how much more intentional and heavenly minded Christ is when he neglects his earthly needs than we are when we typically neglect our earthly needs. He has an intentionality and a heavenly mindedness here that we could learn from. He and his disciples, well, first of all, remember why Christ is sitting here. Why is he sitting on the well? He's on a long journey. It's hot. The text says he is tired and hungry and thirsty. We know that's the case. He sent his disciples into town to buy food because they don't have any food with them. He's waiting at a well because they don't have any water with them. And he asked this Samaritan woman, for a drink. There's no reason to think that this is all just a charade, that Christ is asking for a drink of water just as a rhetorical advice to start an evangelistic conversation. It's not just an icebreaker. He didn't just send the disciples away so that he could have a moment alone with this woman. These were real needs that they were having. Now, certainly Christ was first and foremost on a mission to reveal himself to, and in fact, to save this Samaritan woman. Her spiritual needs were absolutely his main concern here, far more than his own earthly needs. But he was still, even that being the case, he was still tired and hungry and thirsty when he sat down at the well. However, When the woman arrives at the well, Christ sees not only the Samaritan woman, but he sees laid before him a heavenly banquet of spiritual food, and he sits down and he feasts on it. He doesn't forget about his hunger, but something else supplies that lack that he's experiencing in that moment. So when the disciples bring him food and they're urging him to eat, they're begging him to eat, Jesus doesn't snap back into reality like we do. when we've been so focused on another task, and he doesn't say, oh yes, I forgot, I'm hungry. Yes, eating sounds great now. Now that I think about it, I'm ravenous. Jesus has not forgotten about his earthly needs. He has not lost track of time at all. Rather, his body's desire for food, his body's desire for food was so satisfied completely by his soul's feasting on the work that his father had sent him to do, that he literally no longer needed or desired the food that his disciples had brought him. Jesus was so refreshed and filled and rejuvenated by doing his father's will that he did not have a need or desire for any other sustenance at that moment. And this is not some gnostic reading of the text that says, well, the world doesn't matter anything. Everything that matters is in this spiritual, ethereal, heavenly plane. This isn't to say that the body is unimportant, but it does show that the light and momentary needs of this life are not even worth comparing to the spiritual glories of heaven. And in fact, these earthly needs are sometimes, sometimes satisfied by heavenly provision because heavenly rewards are so much greater than earthly rewards that they can just swallow up all of your earthly needs at times. that satisfying the longings of the soul are so much more important than supplying the temporary needs of the body, that when the soul is well cared for, the body requires less attention. It's an interesting fact. You can see how those that are in the world that don't know the Lord, how obsessive they are about their bodies. Because that's their main need. They don't realize that their souls are the ones that are starving. And so they keep trying to fill that void with either getting in the best shape or eating the best food or having the best physical pleasure. But for the Christian, we have a spiritual inheritance. that helps us not only once we get to heaven but even in this life to find satisfaction and contentment. This type of complete denial and devaluing even of physical needs because the spiritual fulfillment is so great is not unique to this story in John 4. There are other places in the Bible where we see something very similar happening here and even to a much greater extent. Think of when Jesus was being tempted in the wilderness. Jesus had just been baptized. He goes out into the wilderness because the spirit compels him to do so, so that he might be tempted by the devil. And the text says that he went 40 days and nights without food, and then he became hungry. He wasn't hungry the first 40 days and 40 nights that he was out there without food. And Satan shows up. once the hunger does start to bubble up. Jesus is still a real man, of course. He's the realest man that ever existed. So he does get hungry. And Satan shows up and he tempts Jesus to turn the stones into bread. What does Jesus say to him? He says, man shall not live by bread alone. but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God." In other words, Jesus says, I didn't need to eat bread over the past several weeks because my diet had been totally satisfied. I had been completely full of God's Word. I had been feasting daily. at the table of scripture, and that in and of itself totally satisfied my body's desire for food. There's this spiritual and physical connection here that's mysterious, but it's real. And this spiritual food is so wonderful to Christ that it satisfies his bodily desire. or think of Moses on top of Mount Sinai in the very presence of God himself. He spends time with God for 40 days and 40 nights, the same amount of time that Jesus was in the wilderness. But this is the thing that'll blow your mind. The text not only tells us that Moses did not eat, it says that Moses did not drink either. Can you imagine that? 40 days without food seems impossible. We could kind of almost imagine, well, I could see how in an extreme scenario, someone might be able to do it. But 40 days without drinking any water. God's word tells us that his face was shining. He wasn't up there suffering. Moses was not up there rolling around on the ground, writhing in hunger pains. He wasn't begging the Lord for water and not being supplied any. He had been so completely filled with the loving presence of God that he did not think about stopping to eat or drink physical food or physical water. He had been eating the spiritual food and the spiritual water that God was providing for him through his communion with him, through his word, through his love. Moses was not hungry or thirsty because he was drinking and eating deeply of a higher source of satisfaction. And Jesus here in our text, though he was hungry before talking to the Samaritan woman, his hunger went away when he had an opportunity to sit down at the table of his father's work. And when Jesus says, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work and to finish his work, that doesn't simply mean here that his food was to obey the commandments of God, to remain pure and holy and sinless and fulfill God's requirement for righteousness in this life. That, of course, was Jesus's work. Jesus came to fulfill the whole law on our behalf. But that law fulfillment in a generic sense is not primarily what's in view here. Nor does Jesus mean as he did in the wilderness. When Jesus says that he's been eating the food of him who sent him, it doesn't mean that he's been satisfied by meditating on God's word. He doesn't meditate on God's word here as he's talking to the Samaritan woman. In the wilderness, before he's tempted by Satan, Jesus said that the word of God was his food. That's what he said, the word of God is my food. But here with the woman in the well, Jesus says plainly that the work of God is my food. It's not just meditating on God's word in our quiet times, in our devotionals, in our secret prayer closets. It's doing the work that God has sent us to do. The work of God is my food. And what is that particular work of God that Jesus is showing his disciples that he came here to do? The work of Christ that brings him both spiritual and physical satisfaction is the gathering in of souls into his father's kingdom. the gathering in of souls into his father's kingdom. Do not say, Jesus says to his disciples in verse 35, do 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 unto harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. The disciples are, they're urging Jesus to eat the food that they brought. They're concerned about their master. He says, can't you see that while you were off gathering physical food in town, I've been reaping spiritual food for my father? And doing that work is more than supplied my body's need for food. Jesus came to earth, not only as a righteous man, but he came with a specific mission of preaching the gospel of the king coming to redeem and win back his kingdom. He tended to a lot of physical needs while he was here on earth. Jesus was a wonderful healer. He opened the eyes of the blind. He restored the lame to being able to walk again. He literally raised the dead to life. He supplied food for thousands upon thousands of people. He provided the best wine available from water pots. Jesus did a lot of physical need meeting when he was on earth in his ministry. And sometimes people today, especially, and in those days, I think, wanted to emphasize those physical aspects of his ministry as what was most important. You hear it all the time. Well, I like Jesus as a man. I like the things he did. He healed people. He was kind. He was a friend of sinners. But I don't know about this Jesus as God thing. You know, it sounds, you know, I don't know. I'm not buying that. You'll hear people say things like that today. And while those things are certainly important aspects of Jesus's love and care for his creation, he did all of those physical, wonder-working things to point to greater spiritual realities. The spiritual needs, and specifically the salvation of sinners, always took priority for Christ. Mark records an event early in Jesus's ministry where he says, it's very early on, and his fame is already starting to spread because there is a healer in town. And Jesus goes to Peter's house and he begins healing anyone and everyone that comes from all types of sicknesses and even from demon oppression. And the whole city, Mark says, the entire city was gathered together at the door of Peter's house to find healing from Christ. And he heals and he heals and he heals. And they go to bed and they sleep. And then early next morning, before everyone else is awake, Jesus gets up. And he goes out to a solitary place to be alone in prayer with his heavenly father. And Peter wakes up. Where's Jesus at? So Peter goes to find Jesus. And he finds him, he says, Lord, everyone is looking for you. And I don't think what Peter means is we were all concerned you were lost. I don't think that's what's going on. I think what Peter's saying is everyone's looking for you because they're expecting you to continue what you were doing last night. We've got a lot of people here waiting to be healed still. And Jesus says this to Peter. He's not denying that there's a need in that town, but Jesus says, let us go on to the next towns that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out. Peter and the other disciples, they're realizing that their master is a miracle working man, that he can heal people from anything. And they're saying, Jesus, time to get back to your father's work. You were clearly sent here as a miracle worker. And Jesus says, I came here to preach. That's what I came here for. I came here to preach. Or as he says elsewhere, the son of man came to seek and save the lost. That's the spiritually lost. And as Jesus is approaching the end of his life in his high priestly prayer in John 17, he says, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your son that your son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. I have revealed to you those whom you gave me out of the world, for I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. What's Jesus saying? You gave me a work of preaching your gospel. I have come and I have finished that. Now it's time for me to die and finish this great work of saving your people. Jesus says over and over and over, the work which the Father sent me to do was to testify to the truth that I am the Messiah, that God's kingdom is coming and that people must trust in me. I was sent as a savior. Yes, but I was also sent as a preacher and a witness. And that is what Jesus is telling his disciples here. My food is to save the lost, to gather in the elect from the world, just as the reaper gathers in the harvest from the field. And I'll ultimately do that by dying for their sins. But for now, I am gathering my people through preaching. And that's what he does to the Samaritan woman. He gives her a lesson in theology. I am the Messiah, he says. He reveals to his people who he is, and that is the means by which they are saved. Even the people that he raised from the dead, they went on to die again. If they didn't know Christ in their hearts, then they died and they departed from this life and from all goodness forever, and they will end up in the lake of fire at the last judgment. But even those who he did not heal physically, If he gave them the living water, if he preached the word and they accepted his word, then they will have everlasting life. So compared to the satisfaction he gets from doing anything, compared to the satisfaction Jesus got from preaching the gospel to lost sinners, the satisfaction that food gives hardly matters. It doesn't even compare in his mind. And then Jesus says this, he says, by the way, this isn't just my mission to preach the gospel and to reap from the field, it's yours too. Verse 38 of John 4, verse 38, Jesus says to his disciples, I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored and you have entered into their labor. Jesus tells his disciples that my food, Well, it's your food as well. We're supposed to be like Christ. We're supposed to imitate Christ. We're supposed to eat the food that Christ eats. Jesus says, you are to join me in this mission of seeking and saving the lost. And he says, look, lift up your eyes. The fields, they're already ready for the harvest. The seed has already been sown long ago. The plants have already shot forth and grown. Now it's time to go gather the wheat from the field. Now, what does that mean exactly? The fields are white unto harvest. The sower has already done his work. What Jesus is saying is that all those Old Testament prophets that went before you, he's talking to his apostles, all the way from Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Moses, down all the way to that last Old Covenant prophet, John the Baptist, they've already sown the seed of God's word. but they did not receive the fruit. They didn't get to see any of the harvest. The book of Hebrews says that all of our Old Testament brothers and sisters died in faith without receiving the promises of God. But now here in John 4, Jesus is telling his disciples that they get the fruit of the labors their forefathers put in. They get to see the promises fulfilled. The end of the ages has come upon them. And we see that happening here with the Samaritan woman and her fellow villagers. She has already heard the law of Moses. She even gets into a little bit of a theological debate almost. Well, Jews say this is where you're supposed to worship, but my people say this. She's heard the teaching about God. A lot of it wrong, but she's heard teaching. She's heard also that Messiah is coming, an anointed one sent from God who would be God himself, who would save his people from their sins. Those seeds had already been sown in her heart and in the hearts of her people already. And probably to the surprise of many, she is ready to receive Christ when he arrives. The Jews are not. Most of them are dead in their sins, but she, a Samaritan woman, is ready to receive the Messiah. And Jesus comes to the well, and he begins reaping this harvest. And the harvest isn't only of her soul. As we see, many Samaritans from that town, our text tells us, believed in Christ because of the woman's testimony, and many more believed when they met Jesus himself and heard him speak the gospel to them. Now today we might ask ourselves, okay, I understand this was a very special time. Jesus was here walking around. The apostles were holy men appointed by God, but are we also in a harvest time like the apostles were? Does this text apply to us too, or is this just a lesson in history that we can learn about? Are the fields white unto harvest today? Do we as ordinary Christians who are not apostles, who were not appointed to the ministry by Christ while He was here on earth, do we get to reap that which for we did not sow as well? Does this apply to us at all? Well, I would answer this in two ways. First, we have to answer with a resounding yes. We will reap what we did not sow. The Spirit of God has now been poured out on all flesh. Christ is on his throne right now. He is reigning right now. The nations are no longer being deceived en masse as they were before Jesus's victory over Satan at the cross. Christ is currently riding his white horse through the earth, expanding his kingdom and calling in his sons and daughters from every tribe and tongue and people and making the nations obedient to him. This is the harvest time. We as the church have been tasked with the ministry of preaching the gospel to all creation. We have been told that we will see a bountiful harvest, that we indeed will do greater works even than Christ did when he was on earth. We have been told that the gates of hell will not prevail against us. We have been told that our task of evangelizing the whole world will succeed because the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead is within us. God's word will not return void. It will accomplish the purposes for which it was sent. That's good news. Yet we also must add to that optimistic answer that the harvest looks different from time to time. It's not always the same. The apostolic era was a unique time in redemptive history, a special time where God's spirit was poured out in a very visible way. And there've been a number of times in history of the church that the harvest has been just exceeding abundant. We can think of the Protestant Reformation, where the truth of God's word, it had been largely obscured by the institutional church for centuries upon centuries. And in his grace, God brought about the recovery of the pure gospel. And through this recovery, a harvest of souls was brought into the kingdom. Or we can think of the Puritan era, where the warmth and vitality of spirit-empowered Christian living was revived within the cold formalism of the Church of England during that day. Or we might think of the Great Awakening, coming right on the heels of the Puritan era, where America was awakened to true evangelical religion, where whole congregations, and in fact, whole entire towns were being converted to Christ at once. That looks like Pentecost to me, whole towns being converted to Christ. There have been many more of these seasons, and certainly there have been many throughout the world, even in our lifetime, in other areas of the world outside of America. But it's not always revival time, even though it is always harvest time. There have been periods in church history where the harvest has been smaller, where it's been comparatively less than before, where the pure gospel has been proclaimed with less fervency and less clarity, where relatively speaking, church growth has been stagnant and slow. But that doesn't mean we're not still in the harvest. The new covenant in Christ's blood is a covenant of harvest time always. Now we still have to sow, Though the apostles, and by extension we, will reap that for which others sowed in advance, we still have to sow as well. We're continuing sowing so those future generations can reap what they did not sow. Just like we're standing on the shoulders of giants that went before us, we might even be those giants for future generations. So we still have to sow. We still share the gospel. We still insist that the word of God is authoritative for all of life. And we continue to proclaim it in every sector, public and private. But we also get the joy of reaping. And whether God sends a harvest of one soul or a hundred souls or a hundred thousand souls, we will still have the joy of reaping. Jesus said that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 who have no need of repentance. Even one soul being saved causes a celebration in heaven. So our job is faithfulness in the meantime. That's our job. Trust the Lord and do what he commands. Our food is the food of Christ, to share his good word, the gospel of our King, with those within our spheres of influence. We must share the message of salvation with our family members, with our friends, with our coworkers, with our neighbors, and with our fellow townsfolk. And we start to think, well, who am I to share the gospel? Has anyone ever thought, you don't have to raise your hand, but just think, has anyone ever thought, who am I to share the gospel? Who am I to bear this great message of our King? I'm just a child. I'm just a little kid. Or I'm just a regular, a nine to five worker. Or I'm not seminary trained. I haven't been to college. I can't speak in public. or I've had a very sketchy and sinful past. How could God use me? Or I don't even know what the Lord wants from my life. I feel adrift. I feel like I don't have any direction. Maybe we've thought some of those things before. How could we be qualified to share the gospel? Who would want to hear us share the gospel? How could we lead anyone to salvation? Well, brothers and sisters, If you ever slip into that type of thinking, you need to do two things. One, you need to repent because that's sinful type of thinking that you on your own could disqualify the task that God has given you. You're not that mighty to undo the work that God has begun within you if you are in Christ. So we need to repent. And then secondly, we need to take courage. Christ has empowered us. He has given us this ministry. And we can do this by remembering what other saints have done in the past. Look at this Samaritan woman. Jesus himself says, you're theologically ignorant. You're not even worshiping according to knowledge and you're definitely confused about how you're supposed to worship. She was a woman in a society where women had no voice in public matters. She was an adulteress. She had been married five times. She was avoiding even being seen by the other women in town. And she led her town to salvation in Christ. Think of that. She led her town to salvation in Christ. God has chosen to use the foolish, weak things of this world to accomplish his great purposes of salvation. I heard a pastor once, and I'm not gonna repeat this, but he did this kind of exercise. He's talking to the congregation. He says, all right, everyone who is college educated, stand up. All right, everyone who makes over $100,000 a year stand up. Everyone who's ever been a captain of any type of sports team stand up. Everyone who can play a musical instrument well stand up. And he goes through this list of like 15 things. And by the end, most of the congregation is actually standing up. And he says, I've got good news for all of you standing. Despite all of these things, God still might use you as well. And the point was God chooses to use those that the world looks down on. God chooses to use the ones that the world says are unsuccessful and unworthy. God uses crooked sticks to draw perfectly straight lines. So if you ever feel discouraged about how could God use you, be encouraged. God used this Samaritan woman. Many of the greatest works of God in history have been done by lay people who were not educated in the things of God formerly. One of the greatest preachers ever to live and walk the face of the earth, Charles Spurgeon, he was led to a living faith in Christ through an uneducated and according to him, and I'm going to put it more kindly, unintelligent man. And Spurgeon then led thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people to salvation. Many true revivals can be traced back to the efforts of laymen and laywomen. The great revival in Korea at the beginning of the 20th century that's been called a Korean Pentecost can in large measure be traced to a group of laymen who started openly repenting toward each other in prayer meetings. And that led to revival. Thousands upon thousands of people being saved. So don't ever think that God can't use you to do his mighty works. But also, even if he doesn't choose to use you to do mighty works, don't measure God's love for you or the certainty of his promises to you by the size of your harvest. Measure his love for you and the certainty of his promises by Christ on the cross and Christ risen from the dead. That's the measure of God's love for us, not anything we see in our own life that we might get confused about. Jesus does not bless everyone with the same degree of fruitfulness, but he does call us all to the same type of faithfulness. We are to be faithful in sowing God's word wherever we are and in reaping God's harvest whenever we see an opportunity. And we can rejoice that we get to be part of the ripening and ingathering of the field of God's kingdom. In heaven, Jesus is clear here in this text, we will not envy brothers and sisters because they reaped more than we did, or we only sowed and they got to reap, whatever it is. We will rejoice together, sower and reaper, that God has brought all of his wheat into the barn, and not a single ear of grain will be left in the field or burned up. Let us go now to the Lord of the harvest in prayer. God, we thank you that you are sovereign over your field. We thank you that you have sown good seed in the soil of our hearts, Lord, and that you have caused it to spring up to life everlasting. We thank you that you have promised to gather all those who are yours, that we will not be burned up in the unquenchable fire if we have trusted In Christ, we thank you for the living water. We thank you for the heavenly food. God, let us feast on that today. Let us feast on your word, on your gospel, and on your work that you have set us to do. God, bless us now as we continue to worship you through the ministry of your sacrament. In Christ's name, amen.