Fields Ready for Harvest

John 4:34-38 - Celebrate Life: Fields Ready for Harvest Doug Partin - The Christian Church - Oct. 25, 2020 We are beginning a new study series that I am calling "Celebrate Life." It is a study that I hope will complement the traditional fall themes of being thankful for God's provision. You don't have to be a farmer to appreciate the abundance that has been given to us over the past year, and how it will see us through the dark months of winter. Over the last year, many have become sick and an astounding number of them have died from the spread of the corona virus. There have been a lot of demands upon us in regard to protecting ourselves from the spread of this virus, some of which we are okay with and others we are not. The changes have resulted in many people and businesses losing their livelihood. And we are having to deal with a lot of changes in our normal way of doing things. There has been civil unrest which in which property has been destroyed and people killed, as their anger has been openly expressed toward the people and institutions they accuse of injustice. There have been natural disasters, fires and hurricanes. And this election cycle has been particularly polarizing and uncivil, as candidates play on the fears and insecurities and resentments of voters hoping that this will get them elected into office. And that is on top of all the normal losses, sicknesses, disappointments and accidents that weigh down on us. We could look at these things and feel that 2020 has been a year in which we have nothing to celebrate. But God has not been absent. He has been with us each moment of every day. He has been providing us with all that we need, and opening up opportunities for us to share our faith and trust in Him. These negatives have brought many people to reach out for God's help. So, we have much to celebrate. This study will also lead us to consider how God used an "outside group," the Samaritans, to teach an "inside group," the rest of the Jewish nation, more about what it really means to be His people. Each week we will take look at a biblical story that involves Samaritans. Our study for today comes from the fourth chapter of John. In it we are told that Jesus and His disciples were passing through Samaria on their way back to Galilee from Judea. The most common route taken back to Galilee avoided Samaria, but passing through it was the most direct way. Jewish travelers generally avoided Samaria because it was the heart of the old northern kingdom that had been made up of the ten tribes that split off from Judea after Solomon's reign. They didn't want their people going back down to Jerusalem to worship, so they created their own temples, and their own priesthood, and combined their Jewish faith with aspects of other religious traditions from the area. Their new northern kingdom eventually fell to the Assyrians, and they were taken captive as slaves, but when they returned from their captivity, those in this part of the country reestablished their old northern kingdom religious ways. The Samaritans were despised for this by the rest of the Jewish people of that time, who held a deep-seated prejudice against them. For when the rest returned from their own captivity, they learned their lesson, and returned to worshipping God alone, in Jerusalem. They settled in the north, known as the region of Galilee and in the south around Jerusalem, known as Judea. But the Samaritans were in the middle. When Jesus and His disciples arrived in Sychar, a Samaritan city that was about 32 miles north of Jerusalem, the disciples went into the city to buy food while Jesus remained outside of the city by Jacob's well. This city is also referred to in other parts of the Bible by its Greek name, Shechem. It was there, at Jacob's well, where Jesus ended up speaking to a woman who was not only a Samaritan, but whose life choices lay outside of God's directives. We don't know the circumstances for those choices, she probably thought that they were the best choices she could have made at the time, but as a result of them she ended up getting married five different times, and the man she was currently living with wasn't her husband, at least, not yet. Which means that she was not a young woman, but one that was worn down by the years of a hard life. She came to the well to draw water in the middle of the day. Some Bible commentaries suggest that she came at that time of day to avoid the crowds. She would not have had the best reputation in town, they point out, and coming at the sixth hour would be a way to avoid any unwanted judgmental stares or confrontations. But Jesus was there, and he spoke to her, asking if she would give Him a drink from the water she drew. He asked in the imperative. You could even translate it as a demand. She pointed out to Jesus that she was a Samaritan, and He a Jew, and they don't normally have anything to do with one another. Jesus led her, word by word, to talk about what she needed: "the gift of God" (that's in verse 10). He likened it to living water. But she was skeptical, and not quite sure whether He is talking about something that quenches the bodies' thirst or that of the soul. Jesus took that opportunity to speak to her a little more about what He could offer her. And she became very interested. In trying to understand what Jesus was really talking about, she asked how Jesus planned on getting this "living water," since He had nothing with which to get it from Jacob's well. She also asked, point blank, if Jesus thought that He was somehow greater than Jacob, who had given them this well that had lasted through the years. To demonstrate that He was greater, Jesus revealed that He knew about the very things that she didn't really want anyone to know. Her past and present choices. But she was still leery of Jesus, all that proved was that He was some sort of a prophet. So, she pointed out again, that as a Samaritan, her "faith" was quite different than His faith. Her ancestors worshiped on the mountain, a reference to Mt. Gerizim, which gave a commanding view over the whole region, and His ancestors worshipped in Jerusalem, which was also on a mountain, Mt. Moriah. Jesus acknowledged the differences. He told her that the Samaritans worshiped what they did not know, and the Jews worshipped what they knew, and that salvation would come to the Samaritans from the Jews. Jesus looked beyond the religious division to that time when everyone would worship the Father in "spirit and truth." It wouldn't be on a mountain, either in Samaria or Jerusalem. Because God is spirit, those who worship Him, Jesus said, must do so in spirit and in truth. Our worship is not about location, but about knowing the truth about ourselves and about God. How none of us are right with God, but that He desires to forgive us and draw us into His family. And He promises to fill us with His Holy Spirit. We all thirst for this life transforming living water. Her demeanor revealed that she really was longing for something better, something that would give her a new lease on life, one without all the baggage of her sin and situation. Despite all the "wrong stuff" she certainly believed because she grew up Samaritan; she rightly believed that this new lease on life would only be possible when the promised Messiah arrived. You would have had to look past a lot of problems in this woman's life, and past your own prejudices about her, to recognize, as did Jesus, that she was ready to be "harvested." Jesus broke through the layers of protection and self-preservation, that allowed her to embrace that He was, as He revealed Himself to be to her, the Messiah. She immediately ran back into the city, perhaps even running past the disciples who were by then making their way back to Jesus, to invite everyone who would listen to come out to the well and met the man who she now believed was the Christ. The disciples' forage into the city was successful. They had plenty of good things to eat, and they were encouraging Jesus to join them in the feast, but He told them that He wasn't hungry. They couldn't believe it. He had to be hungry. But, He explained to them that because of His work in the field that was ripe for harvest His appetite was satisfied in a way that food cannot make happen. The disciples were confused. So, Jesus had to explain further that His "food was to do the will of the one who sent Him, and accomplish His work." Why had Jesus been sent? Because God so loved the world To seek and save the lost To do the will of God To accomplish His work Jesus also told the disciples that because they were looking to the future for an expected harvest (He might have been referring to their return to Galilee where the Jewish people who lived there had previously responded to Him in great numbers and would do so again), that they were overlooking the harvest that was right in front of them in Samaria. In Samaria, Jesus continued, they (His disciples) would "reap" and "receive wages" and "gather fruit" for eternal life, that someone else had "sown." We are not told who had prepared the Samaritans, only that they were ready to hear the gospel message. I get the feeling that Jesus had intentionally sent His disciples into the city to "reap" from the labors of others. They (His disciples) had been the ones who had previously preached in the cities of Galilee, preparing them to receive Jesus as the Messiah. But someone else had prepared the people of Samaria. Of course, God would ultimately be behind this preparation. But, Jesus' disciples missed the opportunity to enter into the harvest when they entered into the city. They did not see the people as Jesus saw them because they were looking for the products they needed to survive. And so, they returned from the city with a hunger the sort of food they found could satisfy. They had not engaged anyone in the kind of conversation that Jesus had with the woman at the well. From that one conversation with a person who was already prepared by another to expect and look for the Messiah, Jesus had entered into the harvest. And He wanted His disciples to do the same. It makes you wonder how many times we have missed the opportunity to share the gospel with someone who was ready to hear it because we did not see them in the way that Jesus saw the Samaritan woman. John reports that many Samaritans came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah because of the testimony of the woman alone, others came out to meet Jesus for themselves, and they ended up asking if Jesus would stay with them, which Jesus did. He ended up staying there for two days, and over that time many more Samaritans came to accept Jesus as the Savior of the World. I'd have to say that there was a great harvest in Samaria. If you didn't know, Jesus and His disciples had left the Jerusalem area because the Pharisees had heard that they had been baptizing more disciples than even John the Baptist. It seems to have been a good harvest; but not all of that area were ready to hear the gospel, for Jesus said, "a prophet has no honor in His own country." As the old saying goes, "Familiarity breeds contempt." When we know people our whole lives, it is hard for them to see us in a new light. We may go off and accomplish great things, learn skills, and become successful in some profession. But when we return home, we go back to being seen as little Suzie or Johnny. An already known quantity. Jesus was known as Mary's boy. His brothers and sisters were also known to them. He was from Nazareth, and they knew that nothing good comes from there. Those returning home, and many of you have done so, know what Jesus was talking about. It is hard to enter into a field of service when you are only known for who you once were, and not for who you have become in Christ. So, John tells us, Jesus and His disciples continued on to Galilee, which was also ready to be harvested. Unlike Samaria, the disciples recognized that it was a field white for harvest. In Luke's gospel, it was just before they were sent to preach in the villages of Galilee that Jesus told them, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest." He also told them, "I send you as lambs into the midst of wolves" (Luke 10:2-3) John said that many people in Galilee received Him as Christ when they arrived. But I hope that the disciples learned the lesson from their Samaritan experience, that God is a work among those we may not consider worthy, preparing them to receive His offer of love, through someone else. The field in which we labor is Los Alamos. And depending upon who is looking, it might be seen as a field ready for harvest, but it might not. We have been, as a church, here since October of 1954, sowing and watering and weeding in hope of that day when Los Alamos will be fully ready for a great harvest; that a revival will break out. But, over the years, hundreds of people have come to the Lord through the workers sent into this field from the Christian Church, and we are not the only church in town. So, there has been a good harvest right here in Los Alamos, and I believe that there are still plenty of people here ready to embrace the gospel, people who are looking for something better, like the woman at the well. The "seed" of God's word has already been planted, and it has been growing in their lives, and all they need is for someone to enter into the harvest and share with them that Jesus really is the Savior of the Word; that God loves them. I'm not entirely sure what to do with John's revelation that when a field is white for harvest that God will bring others to join in the labors of those who had been sowing the seed to gather in the fruit that is ready to pick. But when a field is ready for harvest, you need all the workers you can get. We need to welcome those who join us in sharing the gospel in Los Alamos. While it is a delight to be the workers who come to a field that is ready for harvest, there is also a deep satisfaction in being the workers who prepare it by faithfully sowing God's Word and who, at the right time, will also get to join the harvest. I hope that you begin to see the people around you as Jesus saw the woman at the well. And I can't wait to hear your story, about the conversations that you have had. Prayer: God, we long for that day when Los Alamos is ripe for harvest. Until that day comes, use us to prepare it for that day. Amen.