WORKING THE HARVEST

Introduction

-As you can see from the decorations on the stage, something a little bit different is going on. I don’t think that the decorating committee changed their style.

-No—obviously Vacation Bible School is going on this week, where the kids are going to learn that God has given them everything they need for their salvation as well as to live a godly life.

-VBS is not some program that we do every year just because it is tradition. There is a specific purpose behind it—that kids are introduced to Jesus, come to know Jesus, and will follow Jesus all their days, so that they in turn can introduce others to Jesus and continue the cycle of discipleship.

-This week, as we look out on all the faces of the kids, we are not merely looking at kids who have families who can help fill the pews of our church. We are looking at souls for whom Jesus died and for whom Jesus has sent us out to reach.

-But, in fact, every ministry that we do as a church ought to be headed in that direction. Our work as Christians and our work as a church is to work in the harvest of souls where God has planted us.

-Outside these walls are people described by Jesus as sheep without a shepherd—people wandering the earth without purpose and meaning, not knowing the Creator or the purpose for which they were created.

-Jesus Himself worked to reach these people during His earthly ministry. He then points us disciples in that direction, saying that there is a great harvest of souls to be gathered into God’s kingdom, and we are the ones called to work in that field.

-In the passage that we are looking at today, Jesus met a Samaritan woman at a well, and offered her living water. Coming to a very basic understanding of who Jesus is and what He offered, she went back to her village to invite the people to check Jesus out for themselves.

-Meanwhile, Jesus’ disciples (who had gone to look for food) return to Jesus to offer Him the food. And it is here that Jesus teaches them that the work that sustains His ministry, and the work that will sustain theirs and ours as well, is to do the will and agenda of the Father, which is to sow and reap in the harvest of souls that are all around them.

-May we all come to a place where we seek to do the work of the Father in the harvest that is around us every day.

John 4:31–45 ESV

31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” 32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” 33 So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” 34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. 35 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. 36 Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. 37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” 39 Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 And many more believed because of his word. 42 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.” 43 After the two days he departed for Galilee. 44 (For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown.) 45 So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast.

-There’s just three quick lessons I want us to contemplate today:

I) Harvest work takes precedence over physical comfort

-Jesus, although God, was completely human, so He needed to eat and drink and rest. He needed to sustain His body if He was to do ministry in the body.

-So the disciples were not out of line in offering Him food. But at that moment there was something of a higher significance going on other than merely thinking of the physical.

-Jesus was having a divine appointment, first with the Samaritan woman, but then in a moment with an entire village. Jesus had a chance to make an eternal difference, and so things of earth would have to take a back seat.

-Jesus tells His disciples that there is something more important than earthly food that sustains Him on this earth—the food that sustains Him is to do the will of God and to accomplish His work.

-What was that work? His work was to proclaim the Kingdom of God being at hand through His presence, and eventually through His death and resurrection. Physical food would have to wait so that the more important work of sowing the gospel and reaping the harvest could take place.

-Or, as Jesus would quote during His temptation:

MAN DOES NOT LIVE BY BREAD ALONE

-Doing the work for which we were saved takes precedence over our own personal comforts. Think of all the decisions you make every day, and how you prioritize what it is you do. {Let’s be honest} aren’t most of our decisions based on what is going to give me a nice, happy life rather than questioning if we are doing the work of God, even if it inconveniences us or we have to actually sacrifice some comfort for the good of others and the good of the Kingdom?

-We need constant reminding that this physical world is not the only plain of existence that we are dealing with. Yes, we need food—but sometimes the physical needs are less important than the spiritual that has eternal significance.

-Every day we prioritize our life. Some mornings we don’t want to get out of bed. It would be physically more comfortable just staying in bed all day. But our need to go to work takes precedence over our desire to stay in bed because it is a higher priority to make a living than to lay around lazily, so we choose to get out of bed to do that which is more important.

-If we are able to discern that there are certain earthly things that take precedence over others, are we not then able to discern that working the harvest of souls is more important than our own physical comforts?

II) Harvest work is constantly pursuable

-To continue to emphasize this priority, Jesus points to something that was common to His day. The Jewish economic system was very much agricultural. So Jesus uses an illustration from farming.

-Jesus points out that it is a common saying that THERE ARE YET FOUR MONTHS AND THEN COMES THE HARVEST. What that means is that there was a time for sowing seeds, but then you would have to wait several months for the plants to grow and then bear fruit before you could reap the benefits.

-In their society, they were used to having only certain set times that they could reap the harvest. If they sowed seeds in the fall, they would have to wait until the spring to reap.

-But Jesus says when it comes to the harvest of souls, the time to reap is always in the present.

-And I believe the timing of Jesus’ saying is very important. Just moments before this, the Samaritan woman had left Him by the well to go to the village to tell them about Jesus. The village decided to go out and investigate.

-So right about this time the men, women, and children were coming out of the village to make their way to Jesus by the well.

-As they are leaving the village, following the path to the well, Jesus is having this interaction with His disciples. And Jesus first tells His disciples that the harvest of souls takes precedence over the physical, but then also that the opportunity to both sow and reap is now.

-He reminds them of their saying that YET FOUR MONTHS THEN COMES THE HARVEST—but then Jesus points to this sea of people flowing out of the village (pointing to men and women and children who, although they were Samaritans that were despised by the Jews, they were precious in Jesus’ sight), He says:

LOOK! I TELL YOU TO LIFT UP YOUR EYES TO THIS SEA OF PEOPLE COMING OUR WAY, AND SEE THAT THE FIELDS ARE WHITE FOR THE HARVEST RIGHT NOW!

-Jesus is telling them that there is no ONE PARTICULAR SEASON that is appropriate to reap souls in the harvest—every moment is a right time to reap souls from the harvest. THERE IS NO TIME LIKE THE PRESENT.

-It is not just a matter of time, it is a matter of perspective. When we look out at the kids at VBS, we see a harvest to work in RIGHT NOW. But also when you are at work, you also see a harvest to work in RIGHT NOW. And when you are at a football game, you see a harvest to work in RIGHT NOW.

-Working the harvest of sowing the gospel and reaping souls is a work that is pursuable at all times.

III) Harvest work is an effort of the whole church community

-In v. 37 Jesus tells His disciples that the saying holds true that ONE PERSON SOWS AND ANOTHER PERSON REAPS, and in the next verse He reminds them that others have labored before them (referring to the prophets of old), and the disciples have entered their labor.

-Jesus is reminding His disciples that it is a group effort to sow the gospel and bring people into the Kingdom of Christ. It takes everybody to both sow and reap.

-There may be a time when someone from a church sows a seed of the gospel, but it doesn’t take immediate root. But days, weeks, months, or years later that gospel seed sprouts and bears fruit, and it might be another person or it might even be another church that is there to reap the harvest.

-But just because we may not see immediate results does not mean that we stop the sowing and the reaping. We do our part with the situation that God has placed us in.

-It takes a church working together to get the message out that all of mankind is headed to certain eternal destruction because they have rebelled against God; that God is perfectly just and will punish all rebels; but that God has also provided a means of escape because the punishment due to us was placed on His Son, Jesus Christ, on the cross. All who place complete faith in Him are saved from eternal condemnation. But all who do not are already condemned.

-All Christians in all churches in all places at all times are working together to sow and reap. We are a community with an eternal perspective trying to get people to consider their own souls, and believe on the one who can save them.

-Therefore we do not neglect our part of the work in this harvest; and then we also do not look down on any other Christian or church as they labor. We join together for the work that the harvest may be brought in.

Conclusion

-I’ll close with this:

There is a quote from an unknown missionary that I believe I have shared before, but I think it appropriate to share again. He said:

“Many churches today remind me of a laboring crew trying to gather in a harvest while they sit in the tool shed. They go to the tool shed every Sunday and they study bigger and better methods of agriculture, sharpen their hoes, grease their tractors, and then get up and go home. Then they come back that night, study bigger and better methods of agriculture, sharpen their hoes and grease their tractors and go home again. They come back Wednesday night, and again study bigger and better methods of agriculture, sharpen their hoes, grease their tractors, and get up and go home. They do this week in and week out, year in and year out, and nobody ever goes out into the fields to gather in the harvest.”

-May that not be us. May we be a church working in the harvest. If you are a Christian, come to the altar and pray that God would use you individually and we collectively to sow and reap a gospel harvest.

-But maybe you are sitting in the pew and have realized that the gospel seed of Christ’s death and resurrection for you has never taken root in your soul. You need to be gathered in the harvest. Listen to me, the Bible talks about four different types of harvest.

1) There is a physical harvest that God provides on earth: While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease." (Gen. 8:22 ESV)

2) There is a harvest that sin produces that affects all of mankind: Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. (Gal. 6:7 ESV)

-you sow sin, you reap the consequences

3) There is the Gospel harvest that our passage talked of today—Jesus saving those who would believe upon Him

4) But then there is harvest of judgment that will come in the end, where it is said: The harvest is the end of the age (Matt. 13:39 ESV) where God’s judgment will fall on those whose sins are not forgiven

-We all are cursed because of the harvest of sin, but if we believe in the Gospel harvest we will not have to endure the harvest of judgment…