Lift Up Your Eyes

This morning's sermon scripture reading comes from John 4.

We're gonna do part two on John 4, continuing on from last week, and we'll cover the same verses, verses 1 through 15 and then 27 through 42.

So you can follow along in your Bibles or in your bulletin there with us.

Here now the reading of God's holy word.

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 come to and he had been and he had to pass through Samaria.

So he came to a town of Samaria called Sikar, 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.

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 bought 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 not say there are yet do you not say, yet there are 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 the 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 the 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 ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.

Amen.

Would you pray with me?

O gracious Father, we ask now that through the power of your Holy Spirit you would enable the bubbling stream, the water that you have given to us to continue to bubble up, to continue to pour forth in our souls.

Lord, we pray that we would be led to glorify you and experience the fullness of joy that you offer.

And so we pray and ask that you would do all of this through your word to us this morning.

Amen.

So we continue our study on John 4 this morning, as I mentioned.

And if you weren't with us last week, I'd encourage you to jump online at some point, maybe today or throughout this week, and listen to last week's message.

But we love a good story, don't we?

Stories have a way of capturing our hearts and our interest and just have a way of drawing us in.

The Apostle John knows this and tells many stories about Jesus' ministry.

It's all about his story, the unfolding story of God, recording his mighty works and his person.

And as we heard last week, John captures this fascinating and yet fruitful account of a conversation with a woman, which was like a gushing stream into the personal story of a woman at a well.

And my intention is not to go over what was said last Sunday in terms of the context and the background, but I do want to focus on the second part of Jesus' conversation.

In the first part, he is conversing with an agnostic Samaritan woman.

And for the second part, he is conversing with his disciples.

And that's where I want to spend most of our time this morning.

The disciples have been away in the city purchasing food to bring back to Jesus since they were all hungry and had been on a long journey.

And they arrived back only to be completely flawed that he is speaking with a woman, unlike the other rabbis of the day.

And not only any woman, but a Samaritan woman.

But knowing him well enough by now, they remain quiet.

The woman sees this as an opportunity to leave, and she does in such haste that she leaves her water jar behind.

Meanwhile, Jesus uses this as an opportunity to speak to the disciples, to remind them of where their concern ought to lie, not with their stomachs, but with their work, and primarily being about spiritual food.

Their spiritual perceptions had become blunt, and Jesus would have them lift them back up to heavenly realities and a harvest mindset.

Brokenness and all.

A man who was able to see her for who she was and speak to her in a way that revealed the thirst of her soul, and yet also satisfy it.

And so here she was questioning if he was the Christ.

Well, upon her testifying to this, she convinces a number of people in the town to come out to the well, only for them to ask and plead with Jesus to stay with them, so that they also might hear from him.

And so Jesus agrees to this, and he remains with them for two days, and revival breaks out in this town, with many coming to believe in Jesus for themselves.

An amazing account of Jesus' ministry.

An account that raises the question: how are we to go about this work of sowing and reaping?

How might we carry this work out?

We might believe that it's important and that we ought to be part of the Great Commission.

But what ought this to look like?

How can we become a vital part of this work in a way that is less guilt-induced and more like food to us?

And so the first thing we see here is the need for spiritual food.

We see here the disciples urging Jesus to eat, and he responds saying, I have food to eat that you do not know about.

With the woman, he addresses her thirst.

With the disciples, he's talking about food.

The food he was talking about was doing the will of the Father, of accomplishing his work.

He's saying, in effect, the thing that drives me and gives me life and joy is doing the will of the Father.

That's what nourishes me.

I just spent the last while talking to this woman about her need for salvation, revealing her thirst, revealing her restless heart.

And I'll tell you, I am full.

It brings me joy.

John would say the same thing in his letters to the church, exiled from the island of Patmos years later.

He would say, I'm writing these things to you, he says, so that our joy may be complete.

It's food.

There's something enriching about doing the Father's will.

And I think the great problem we have today in evangelism is that it can often be something, as I mentioned earlier, that we try to manufacture out of guilt rather than understand and conduct ourselves as an expression of living out of the freedom of the Spirit.

You look at the New Testament emphasis, and it's on ordinary people who have come to know Jesus and share his grace and truth with joy.

When it comes to evangelism, I think much of the church over the past several decades or so has been tempted to place confidence in certain methods or techniques in the desire to be more effective.

But when we do so, we encounter a very real danger of obscuring our most basic need.

And that is the ability to inquire into and seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit.

We've come to think of evangelism as more like a sales pitch or some kind of technique that we need to master.

Or else it's something that we believe that we ought to leave to the professionals.

And so the whole idea of equipping people in outreach has tended to focus on the need to learn skills rather than the biblical emphasis of fostering spiritual dependence, spiritual character, and spiritual wisdom.

And yet notice Jesus isn't concerned to seal the deal with this woman with the anxiety of a used car salesman, like we may attempt to do.

And so as he is able, he relates to this woman with grace and gentleness, truth and wisdom.

And so what really sells then is not technique, but the value of the commodity.

The value of the gospel.

That's where we ought to be focusing our primary attention.

And I think that's where some of the danger lies in this whole subject.

That we ought to give ourselves to evangelism is not in question.

But how we go about that is in question.

Now I'm not knocking these things.

I think there is a place for training.

My point is that there can be a danger of placing our confidence in technique and stifling fervor if we're not careful.

Where we essentially stop relating to people in any normal manner.

And everything becomes rather mechanical or bookish.

Here's an example of what I'm trying to get at.

Welsh minister Martin Lloyd Jones once told the story of a pastor who had done a course in psychology.

It was in lieu of the belief at that time that pastors at that time be proficient in various psychological techniques in order to be effective.

And this pastor came to talk to Lloyd Jones about a very personal problem.

And it was concerning his relationship with his wife.

The pastor couldn't understand why he and his wife weren't getting along.

He had been taught in this class how to discern various psychological types.

And the first thing he was taught to do was to attempt to categorize which group people fell into.

The problem was he couldn't seem to make a firm psychoanalysis of his wife.

He couldn't quite determine what kind of category to put her in under a certain classification.

And after he spoke of these issues, Lloyd Jones told him that the problem was quite clear.

He had forgotten that this woman was his wife.

And he had begun to treat her like a psychological problem.

It was that year of psychological training that had done it, you see.

He had ceased relating to her, loving her as his wife.

You see the problem here.

In placing all of our emphasis on technique, we can lose sight of the ability to relate to real people with real needs and real thirsts and the power of the Spirit.

And all the while we become the ones who must do all the organizing and all the directing and all the leading.

Look at the New Testament.

It wasn't skill and technique that they possessed, it was an encounter with the living Christ and his saving work on their behalf and their desire to testify it, testify to it as they were able.

And that's a lifelong process.

Because sin is never fully eradicated and in need of being brought to the cross.

It's true that people who have had the most impact on my life have been people who have sought after holiness and fought to make the joy of the Lord their strength.

They've exuded a love for the gospel and possessed a humble spirit and have sought to pursue my heart with loving wisdom and truth.

No, not in every conversation.

It's not that we it can't be physically tiring, but there is this deep satisfaction in carrying out God's will and all that they do.

Internal thirst and external food.

These things go hand in hand.

We worship a God of glad tidings.

And so, although we deal with misery in this life, a joyless Christian is no true representation of their Lord.

What's not to sing about?

I'm reminded of this on many mornings.

We have a good amount of bamboo in our yard, and I really don't recommend planting the stuff.

It's been a thorn in my side for many years.

But the early morning sun will often rise and shine on the birds that live there.

And as it warms them, we often wake up to this loud chirping.

This joyful singing in the morning.

It speaks of life and energy and new mercies.

And in the same way, our spirits are enlarged as we perceive and understand the light and warmth of Christ's love toward us in the gospel.

His promises to us, his favor upon us, over us.

And so we sing loudest in proportion to the Spirit applying this light and love to our souls.

We grow in our gratitude and joy as a way of life.

And that's what leads to more sowing.

So that's the first thing.

Thirst and food go together.

Internal thirst, external food.

But we also see the need for the Spirit to give us eyes to see the harvest.

God is already at work.

The question is: do we see it?

Lift up your eyes, Jesus says.

We just prayed a few moments ago that the Spirit would do a work in our minds and our hearts.

And we don't do this full of formality.

We do it because we are prone to having our senses become dull, our affections misplaced, and our understanding darkened.

And so we need the Spirit to open our eyes afresh to see the things of the Spirit and the beauty of Christ.

We see this all over John's gospel and in this text.

Let me give you a few examples.

Jesus offers the woman spiritual thirst.

The woman replies, Give me this water so that I don't need to come back and keep drawing water, as though he had some kind of secret well stashed away that could make her life more efficient.

Jesus here is talking about spiritual life.

And he says to us and his and says to his disciples, I have bread you don't know about.

And they ask among themselves, did someone give him something to eat?

As though he had phoned in an order from Uber Eats.

Jesus talks to Nicodemus about spiritual birth.

And he replies, How can a man be born when he is old?

Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?

As though Jesus were suggesting some kind of new medical or mystical technique.

You see, there's this veil.

Unless God opens up eyes to see these realities, there is no light, understanding, and thus life.

As one saint said, we preach and pray, and you hear, but there is no motion Christward until the Spirit of God blows upon them.

If dead people are to be given life, if unborn people are to be born, if the blind are to be made Made to see, the deaf made to hear.

Then it must be God who does it.

I mean, think about it.

We would be, we would think it's somewhat crazy for someone to go to a graveyard and try to convince the dead by using the four spiritual laws.

Likewise, try to try to convince an unborn that they ought to come and be part of an evangelistic program.

Or tell a blind person that they ought to have greater affections to see.

And yet, do we reflect this belief in our prayers, in the degree to which we pray?

We need to come to terms with our inability to regenerate and convert people.

And that means earnestly asking for the Spirit to be at work.

If we believe this, then we'll first and foremost be people of prayer.

But praise God that He does desire to do this.

Jesus says, I sent you disciples out to a harvest.

A field you didn't have to toil over at all.

Others did all the work, and you, disciples, get to enter into the fruit of their labor.

Now the question that arises, who are these others who did all the work?

And there's some debate about from commentators about who this is referring to.

Some think it's referring to John the Baptist, who had been in that area prior, or even as far back as Moses.

But regardless of what means he used, I think the crucial point that we understand is that it is first and foremost a divine work that the disciples are able to enter into.

Because here's the thing: we are often prone to assuming that it's us who are doing all the work.

Right?

Can often feel like that.

But Jesus, in giving the great commission, says, But lo, I will be with you always until the end of the age.

One commentator says like this The Father brought Jesus to Samaria through an apparent had to.

We see that in verse 4.

Jesus said, I have to go.

Jesus brought the spirit to the woman through a conversation about living water, asking, marriage, and worship.

And the fountain spirit in turn brought the woman back to her town and gave her the gush of truth and power to bring both a sermon and then a city finally to Jesus.

Isn't that marvelous?

The reality is, friends, that these others are already at work.

The question is, do we believe that?

Do we realize that we are merely partners in the harvest?

And so it's not as though God phones in his order from heaven only for us to muster up enough self-motivation so that he might get more servants.

Rather, evangelism is something that God is already involved in, and we have the ability to enjoy fellowship with him as we share in that mission.

And so are we asking the Spirit to give us the eyes to see the harvest?

Do we have a harvest mindset?

Thank God that he is with us and hasn't left us to ourselves.

But then finally, we have the privilege of sowing and reaping together.

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

The woman sowed, and many came to believe for themselves, reaping a harvest.

A revival broke out in this town.

A thirst led to a spring, which led to a gushing of eternal life.

So, how then are we able to carry this out?

Let's get practical.

What does this look like?

Well, much of it depends on hope.

Are we sowing in hope?

As I said, the gospel is the precious commodity.

There are many ways that we can give expression to this.

Where is God working?

Where does he go before us?

What is he calling me to, you to?

We ask those questions because God calls us to use our gifts in numerous ways to sow and participate in the harvest.

Don't assume that you need to fit into the mold of uniformity.

That's not a license for self-centeredness.

We're all a part of this together.

But God would have you and I carry out this work as living stones to build his temple according to his leading.

And what that looks like for you and I and us collectively is for him to determine.

What is he calling you to?

What is he calling me to?

That's the question.

I would also add that being a frequent participant in worship is declarative.

It's not only a great encouragement to pastors and to others, but it speaks of the value of the gospel.

Perhaps some face a hardship in their lives, and they decide to come and see many people worshiping God.

And they're led to question at that time.

And perhaps you're here today with similar questions.

But they come in their hurt and with their burdens and look around and question if maybe there is something to this faith.

Oh, I thought it was on its way out.

Maybe there is something to this faith.

People with deep thirsts that only God can satisfy.

Do we expect this?

Praise God that we have seen this happen among us.

And we can testify to it.

We give some examples of this in the inquirer's class and other places.

Real people, real names.

The Spirit works powerfully through worship and your participation.

This is not pie in the sky.

People who have their thirsts quenched.

Likewise, we participate in evangelism through the giving of our tithes and offerings, which go to the work of mission, partnerships, and the spread of the gospel.

We mustn't despise the day of small things.

But then we also sow in the context of community.

I think this is a much neglected aspect of our evangelistic endeavors.

If we are growing in gospel community, conversations of a spiritual nature ought to be common.

Christian community that values this gospel ought to be a safe place where these kinds of spiritual conversations are taking place.

As we talk about our thirst, the grace of God, Christ and the Christian life, and invite others in.

And again, this is not a distant reality.

We've seen people who have had their thirst quenched through inquirer's classes and through CFGs, covenant fellowship groups, Christian community.

Don't think you need a seminary degree or years of religious experience to achieve this.

The Samaritan woman knew very little of the gospel.

It certainly wouldn't have passed the grade of a homiletics class.

I mean, she was still questioning if Jesus was the Christ.

It didn't matter.

She had met Jesus.

She knew what he had done.

And the Spirit used her testimony, and they had come to see, they had to come and see for themselves.

We see the same thing after Pentecost.

The Jewish rulers saw the boldness of Peter and John and perceived that they were professors of religion.

No, that's not what it says.

It says they were uneducated and common men.

But what did they have?

They'd come to know Christ through the power of the Spirit.

And they knew the value of what they'd been given.

I still remember witnessing as a child a neighbor who came to Saving Faith.

And not long after her conversion, her mother-in-law died.

And I still remember going over to her home and listening to her speak of how thankful she was to be able to share her newfound hope in the gospel to her children.

The hope that because of their grandmother's faith in Christ, she was still very much alive.

And the hopeful anticipation of one day seeing her again.

Here she was, even in her grief, sharing this gospel hope, sowing the seed of the gospel with her children.

This good news, this water that began to spring up in the Samaritan woman's soul and led to a gushing forth.

I sometimes think that this is the essential thing that we need today.

People who are willing to listen to others.

People with wisdom and patience.

Who have a deep understanding of their own thirst.

People are greatly helped in our ability to share their hurts and troubles with Christians in a broken world.

People are so busy today that they've lost or never really known how great a blessing it is to be able to share their heart with Christians, with someone.

To have someone sympathize with them.

Being sympathetic to people in a world of hurt.

Do we pray for the Spirit to work in such conversations?

Are we asking God to grow us in wisdom as we sow truth and grace in our conversations with others?

Again, praise God that we have seen the Spirit use such instances and lives of people here in our midst.

Oh, there's much more that could be said.

But all of this is food, the will of God, and will stand the test of time.

He who sows in hope shall reap in joy.

Oh friends, all of this is only possible because Jesus sowed the ultimate seed on the cross.

Descending into the darkness of the grave.

Removing himself from the Father's light.

It's because of his being sown in death.

For our sakes, that eternal life may be reaped by any of us.

And yet knowing he also rose and lives means we may also have the joy of joining him in the harvest, that we might share in resurrection hope.

Spirit-led, spirit-reliant evangelism over guilt-induced pragmatism.

That's what we're after.

Oh, that we would find this to be our bread and seek to be filled with the joy of the gospel.

Amen.

Let us pray.

Oh mighty God, we thank you for your searching spirit who gives us satisfying water.

Oh Lord, we pray that this gospel would continue to bubble up in us, would spring forth in our souls, that would lead us to speak and share of your goodness and your praises, your excellencies.

Oh Lord, we desire that.

We desire many to come to know you and to share in the hope that we possess.

Oh Father, we praise you and thank you for this hope.

And we we pray all these things in your precious name.

Amen.