(Part 1 of 2)
“34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work. 35 Do you not say, ‘There are still four months and then comes the harvest’? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest! 36 And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. 37 For in this the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.”-John 4:34-38 (NKJV)
According to the Kennedy Institute of Ethics: 65 million people die each year around the world. That is 178,000 people each day, 7,425 each hour and 120 each minute. As I think about those numbers, within the context of John 4, I have a little different take on them. If those numbers are accurate, 65 million people cross over into either eternal life with God or eternal separation from God each year. That is 178,000 each day, 7,425 each hour and 120 each minute.
In John 4, Jesus has a life-altering encounter with a Samaritan woman at a well near Sychar. She left the well transformed by her encounter with Christ and went back to town to tell everyone about Him:
“The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Then they went out of the city and came to Him.”-John 4:28-30
The disciples had gone to town to find food to eat, while Jesus was busy about His Father’s will winning souls to the Kingdom. When the disciples returned, they urged Him to eat, but rather than dive into the sack lunch they provided, He turns to them and says: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish His work.” Jesus was hungry, but it was a hunger to see souls saved and lives transformed.
Are we hungry for the same things that Jesus is hungry for?
The disciples had gone into town to meet a physical need in their own life. When they returned no one from the community came with them to meet Jesus. Any of them could have invited the people to come out to meet Him. Yet, their mission into the community was not to bring people to Christ; but to fill their own bellies.
Jesus, on the other hand, spent His time ministering to one woman, in which during that short exchange her life was transformed and shortly she would return from town with a host of people to meet Him.
The disciples had literally been wandering among the harvest field that Jesus would speak of and yet none of them could see the harvest. Therein lies the struggle within the church today. We are wandering in the harvest field everyday, yet we are failing to see the harvest. Jesus tells His disciples to lift up their eyes. Why? Because we are living with are heads in the sand when it comes to souls. How is it that we can be standing in the midst of a harvest field and fail to see the harvest? Are we, like the disciples, more concerned about seeing our carnal needs met than they are about doing the will of the Father and finishing His work?
Perhaps their lack of interest wasn’t from being distracted by their own carnal needs at all, but rather they were distracted by their own built in biases. Jews and Samaritans did not get along well. The Jews would often go out of their way to avoid Samaria. The disciples, perhaps, didn’t even see this group of people as being worthy to spend time with Jesus. They didn’t see the harvest because they didn’t see the people they were standing among as being harvest material.
Scott Burr
Dayspring Community Church
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