We cannot be surprised to see the disciples marvel at Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman when they return with food (John 4:27). They have come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, but they do not yet fully understand what that means that he will be or do—and furthermore, they do not understand what that will mean for their own lives as continue to follow Jesus. What surprises them today will eventually become their mission in life, and Jesus begins to prepare them for that calling in this second half of the story of Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman. After having explained to the Samaritan woman the nature of true worship in the first half of this story, Jesus now turns to teach his disciples about the nature of kingdom work, including the sowing and reaping into which he is now calling them to enter.

In this passage, Jesus explains the way that the kingdom will grow: each generation will sow and reap. Through this process, reapers will bring in a harvest that they have not labored for, and sowers will not be cheated out of the joy of their labor if someone afterward enters into the labor that they began. On the contrary, sower and reaper will rejoice together in the grace of the gospel of Jesus Christ (John 4:36). True worship of God in spirit and truth necessarily flows out into the true work of sowing and reaping an eternal harvest of sinners reconciled to God through Christ. This is not merely the mission that Jesus gives to his immediate disciples, but the mission that Jesus has entrusted to his entire church throughout the ages.

If you have a Bible, please turn with me to John chapter four. We looked at the first part of the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman last week, and now we will pick up in verse twenty-seven and continue through verse forty-two to finish out the story. We are starting in John 4:27, hear the word of the Lord.

27 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?” 28 So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” 30 They went out of the town and were coming to him.
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.”
John 4:27-42, ESV

This is the word of the Lord. When I was in school, the thing that drove me absolutely batty, just drove me nuts was when we had to do group projects. Group projects are the biggest Catch-22 in life, because inevitably there is something that happens, this dynamic that just invades and infects and spoils every group project known in the history of man. It is that as you are all trying as this group to get a good grade, usually there's one or two people who actually care about the good grade, and I'm depending on how you see it either blessed or cursed with a desire of people pleasing, that's the shape that my sin nature takes. So I'm that one who wants to do the best work I possibly can do to get that good grade. Then there's other people in the group who just don't care. More than that, they see that you care. They see that they're going to get a good grade because you're going to put in the work. So you're stuck in this situation, that's Catch-22, where either you tank your work to get back at those people who won't help, that'll show him. Then you realize, oh, well, I will get that same bad grade if I don't do good work and see you end up doing pretty much everything. Or maybe you're looking at groups and maybe your story is when you were in school, you were on the other receiving end, and I still love you, Jesus loves you, but you drove me nuts in school.

I was mentioning that one day to a pastor. I was talking about this dynamic and he thought for a moment and said, You know, the church is kind of like a group project, isn't it? There are so many ways in which as a church we have to come together to do really what's fairly simple. The great commission that Jesus gives us, we are able to read it in just a few verses from Matthew 28:16-20, and not all of that is actually the Great Commission.

Some of that is just about people doubting whether they should be involved in this great commission. Jesus says the only thing I'm asking you to do just one thing. The only commandment in that passage is that you are supposed to make disciples. There's three ways that that happens. One is as you're going, that's the context in which you make the disciples. The other is that the way you do, it is by baptizing and then by teaching. Simple stuff, right?

Yet we come into a church and we're plagued with problems and sin and apathy and conflict and all of these things that we have to sort of get a handle on before we can actually do the work of ministry. While Jesus here in this passage teaches us something incredibly important about the way we do it. If we have this mindset where I am not going to work until I knew exactly what I am going to get out of, and I'm going to be a drag on this group project until I see exactly the payment that I'm going to receive and I'm going to get fair compensation. Jesus says that will totally miss the point.

So in this passage, Jesus lays out a pretty clear blueprint for ministry in the church.

1. The Message of Our Ministry
2. The Mission of Our Ministry
3. The Method of Our Ministry

The Message of Our Ministry

Let's look at these one at a time. Starting in verse twenty seven, we read, "Just then his disciples came back." Now there is a big emphasis in the text that it was at that exact moment that Jesus' disciples who had been in the Samaritan town of Sychar, buying food, have come back out. Suddenly that moment is when they come upon Jesus talking to this Samaritan woman. That's really interesting because we looked at last week the way that all kinds of providential things come together. We saw the weakness of Jesus who realized that the Pharisees were after him. So he left town, heading to Galilee, but stopping on the way in Samaria because he was thirsty, he was hungry and he was tired.

That put him in conversation with this woman. Then as he is in conversation with this woman, we read that he gets to the high point of what he wants to reveal to this woman, in verse twenty-six. I am the Christ. I am the Messiah. Then at that moment, and not a second sooner, the disciples return. God had set up this appointment. God makes sure that the disciples are delayed and hindered until the exact moment when Jesus can get through his conversation to declare that he himself is the Christ to this woman.

Now, this is remarkable. The disciples are shocked that he's talking with this woman at all, because in those days, if you are a rabbi you didn't talk with any woman in public, not even your own wife, because you'd be worried about the gossip that can ensue. There was actually a lot more sexism than that. In fact, some people said that for a rabbi to teach a woman at all that that was as bad a thing as to sell his own daughter into prostitution. They had a very low view of women. Here's Jesus, a rabbi, who cuts against that notion by not only singling out a woman, but a Samaritan woman whom the Jews hated and not only a Samaritan woman, but a sinful Samaritan woman. Not only that, but he doesn't just chit chat with her a while. This is the first person we read about in the gospel of John that Jesus directly declares, I am the Christ. That's a remarkable revelation. Jesus reserves it for the Samaritan woman.

As the disciples come back flabbergasted about what on earth Jesus might be doing. The Samaritan woman leaves her jar there and high tails back to her city to tell the people of her city what she has discovered. She says, "Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?" That last sentence is hard to really bring out the nuance in Greek without adding a whole bunch more words, but it's more like this. This couldn't be the Christ couldn't. Is he really here? It couldn’t be him, could it?

Look at what she says, "Come see a man who told me all I ever did." Jesus had told her quite a bit. In the previous section of this passage that we looked at last week. Jesus told her that he'd offer her living water. He told her that the father was seeking worshippers in spirit and in truth. That no longer was placed the decisive factor, whether to worship on Mount Zion or on Mount Gerizim. That the Father was seeking spirit and truth worshipers and said that was the main thing he was seeking.

The only thing the woman brings away to tell her fellow Samaritans was that this is a man who told me all that I ever did. She's referring to her sin that Jesus had exposed. In verse 16, Jesus said to her, "Go call your husband and come here, and 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 have now is not your husband. What you have said is true.'" Now, this is such a touchy moment, Jesus sort of lands on and exposes this woman's sexual sins. There's this moment in the text where we're wondering, wow, where is this going to go?

Now again, the direction that this heads is that this woman asks what she can do. What can I do about this? Can I be a worshiper of God if I worship on the wrong mountain? Jesus says it's not about that anymore because I am here.

In this, we should note that the gospel that Jesus proclaimed to this woman, was not a gospel that pounced on this woman and sort of pushed her deeper into the shame that she lived in her life. The fact that this woman, that's the first thing that she mentions tells us two things. Number one, Jesus must have must have brought up and exposed her sin in a way that was so gracious, so gentle, so loving. He is not looking at her to see how he can smack her down. He's looking and realizing this is a broken person who is deeply wounded. Jesus doesn't condone what she's done. He doesn't dismiss what she's done or write off what she's done. Oh, you know, God won't be that won't care that much. Or, hey, God, just want you to be happy, go do what you want.

He tells her she needs to repent from this but the way he's talking to her, the gentleness is such that so far from being smashed deeper under the weight of her shame, the gospel that Jesus proclaims, actually elevates her above her shame. So that when she goes to her fellow people and says, I've met the Christ, the thing she says is not well, he said some things about living water that I think you should hear, never mind the other stuff we talked about. She goes directly to, he told me all my sin with the subtext and he still loved me.

This is the gospel. Sometimes we live in a culture where sexual sins are particularly complicated because no longer, like in the day of Jesus, were these things a source of deep societal shame. I mean, Jesus was coming at this in a sort of a different context. Now, sexual sims are very often celebrated in our culture. So the question is, how do we deal with that? Do we go around parading how much we hate people? Do we hold signs about how much God hates people? No, we take the path of Jesus.

We say, if you knew the gift of God, you would walk away from what you were doing and drink from the living water that Jesus provides. You are desperate, broken, thirsty, seeking to drink from something that will finally slake and quench your thirst. Understand it's not in the places, it's not from the streams, it's not from the brooks, it's not from the lakes that you found. Those things are not only going to leave you empty, but in fact they are corrosive. They will eat away at these systems that you're trying to dig in your own life. Forsake those and go to the fountain of living waters, God himself, Jesus Christ. God loves you and therefore he wants you to repent and turn from your sins.

As a church, we had to be very clear about God's standards for sexual ethics. So we have to be very clear that the God is reserved sex only for the context of a heterosexual, lifelong marriage. However, what God says here is not that we're supposed to go around smacking people down. We are to have the compassion of Jesus so that a broken sinner comes and says, Do you hear this gospel of grace? It's not about shame. Jesus offers a way out of the pit, a way out of the darkness, and whether those are your sins or not, the same gospel is for you. The same gospel is for all of us who are languishing under the weight of our brokenness.

The message of Jesus is partially the words he uses. There's living water if you ask me for it, but also in the manner in which he proclaims this message. God loves you and because of that, he sent me into this world to die in your place so that you can be reconciled to my Father in heaven as a worshipper who worships in spirit and truth. That's what my father is seeking. He's seeking you.

The Mission of Our Ministry

Well, from this point, Jesus then sort of turns a corner to start talking about the mission that he is on. We've seen Jesus interact in various ways with various people so far. Some of them have been public confrontations that we saw in the temple, where he told them to tear down the temple and in three days, he'll raise it up again, speaking about the temple of his body. Some of them are private and hidden away, like when he turned water into wine at came out, or when he has a private conversation with Nicodemus, the ruler of the Jews. Even this it was out in the open, but it was a private conversation with this woman at the well. Jesus tells his disciples that he's actually here, not just sort of randomly doing things, but that he's here on a very specific mission.

Now here's what confuses them. They come back, and not only is he talking to the Samaritan woman, but in verse 31, they urge him to eat with the food that they purchased, but Jesus says, I have food to eat that you do not know about, and they're exceedingly confused at this point. Has someone else brought him something to eat? Anyone else brought him something to eat? They think that maybe this is a Samaritan woman had left him some food, and she was, I guess, the delivery service and that was headed back to pick up her next pizza order or something like that.

That's not what's happening here. Jesus is saying that the work he's doing, this ministry is so engaging, so nourishing, so fulfilling that he's lost track of time, he's lost track of his own hunger. Remember, he has to stop and sit by this well because he's so wearied, so hungry and so thirsty. Now he's forgotten all about it.

Psychologists talk about a state of work called flow. That when you're in it, you lose track of time, you lose track of your hunger, which must be what Jesus is interacting with. I had one time when I was a kid, I was in class and it was a reading time and I was reading a story. It was one of those moments where I heard someone shut the door and it was silent reading time and I had been reading. Someone shut the door suddenly startled me and I realized, oh, my mind has been wandering this. I'll have to figure out where my mind started wandering. My eyes have been going across this page, but I have no idea what was on the page.
I went back and turned the pages back and I realized, no, this is what I was imagining. This is where my mind was wandering. I was reading this like I could not remember looking at the words, I couldn't remember the active reading. I was so engrossed in what was happening that who knows how much time could have passed, who knows how many meals could have come and gone? I mean, I was a chubby kid, I didn't miss many meals then or now. It could have happened when I was that deeply engrossed in my work.

Jesus is saying, this isn't just normal work. This is a broken sinner who's come to Christ. You bet I'm satisfied; I've waited for my eternity past to see this moment. Not only that, but I’ve also waited 30 years of human time. Do you know how long those take? To see this Samaritan woman come to believe in me and find healing.

So Jesus then tells his disciples, but guess what? I have unique work that I am called to. I have unique work that you can't do. I alone will go to the cross, bearing the weight of your sins on my shoulders. You can't do that. I alone have to suffer and die bearing the curse of God against humankind. You can't do that. I mean, you can, but you will be consumed by it forever. Anyone who does not believe me will receive the punishment of that curse. I alone will have to ascend the right hand to my father to intercede for you as your priest, you can't do that.

Understand you're not going to be able to freeload in this group project. I am not going to do all the work on my own. In fact, one of the reasons I'm gathering a people to myself is to commission and send you into work that you yourselves are going to do.

Jesus explained this to them by way of a warning and a promise. The warning is when Jesus says in verse thirty-five, "Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes and see that the fields are white for harvest." When the fields are white for harvest, when it's time to harvest if you're a farmer, you know you work all year long to get to that point. If you lose any of the harvest, that's damaging, that's a loss. So when the time comes for the harvest, I mean, your labor over the course of the year has been up and down has been different kinds of things. When time comes for the harvest, you stop everything and go bring in the harvest because it's time. Jesus is saying the time has come, the fields are white for harvest, don't lose any of it. That's a warning.

Jesus also gives us a promise. He says it's not just that you might lose some of this. I mean this is in the hands of God, but I'm calling you to play an active role in there. He says not only is there a threat of loss, but also listen to this promise in verse thirty-six, "Already, the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together." There's reward for those who enter into the labor of the kingdom.

Now in the past, this idea of reward has caused Christians to get a little bit uncomfortable. Because sometimes in the past, the idea of reward has been talked about in terms of merit. If I merit enough, if I do enough meritorious works, if I am good enough and work hard enough and accomplish enough and achieve enough, then I will get some kind of reward from God who sees my efforts and rewards them on the basis of it.

That's not the way the gospel works. The gospel announces grace. The gospel announces it the same god who by grace gave you the gift of faith and of eternal life in Jesus Christ is the same God who by grace gives you good works that he prepared before him that you should walk in them. Not only that, but that same God then turns around knowing that he's the one who gave you the will and the ability to work. He motivated you in your heart. He gave you the energy to do what he's calling you to do. That same God then turns around and rewards you for the work that he called you to do, he equipped you to do, he empowered you to do. The same work that he made possible through sending his son, Jesus Christ, into the world.

So what then, is the reward? We could get kind of crassly the materialistic and some people do this, you can pick up actually a shocking amount of books in your local Christian bookstore that talk about the idea of giving, for example, as sort of an investment ahead and your heavenly retirement account. You put in the money now, and once you enter into your heavenly retirement, you'll be able to draw on that money throughout eternity. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal, especially if you get hundred fold interest that Jesus talks about at times.

Do not understand this and crassly materialistic terms. Jesus tells us that the reward we gain is of joy. Look at verse thirty-six, "Already the one who reaps", by the way that's the Samaritan woman, "is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together." Jesus is talking about a relationship between us and God, which is an intimate relationship that is often described in terms of a marriage. Think about a marriage, if you know, if my wife cooked an excellent meal and I left her a $20 bill as a tip, that was wonderful service. Thank you so much. That would be demeaning and degrading. In relationships like this the rewards are not money or stuff that we can acquire. The greatest joy, the greatest reward you can have over a lifetime of marriage is joy between the two parties, to rejoice together.

Not only that, but the promise here, and this should encourage us to the darkest, slowest times in ministry, when we are not seeing the fruit that we would like to see. Jesus promises us that when we go, if we are called to reap, to bring in sinners to lead them to salvation, if that's our role, whenever that's our role, it's not like we are skimming the credit of people who have labored long in the gospel in these people's lives. You know, sometimes you see people all of a sudden seemingly come to Christ. Well, was that person baptized earlier in life? That person lives under years of the preaching of the gospel. Did someone take an interest in that person sharing the gospel with him on the playground or on the street or over the workplace break room? You have no idea how many people have sowed in their life or prayed for these people before God calls someone to faith.

Yet sometimes we are on the sowing end of it, and we worry that, like it says in verse, thirty-seven one sows and another reaps, we worry that maybe we will get cheated out of our wages, just like in the group project. Look at all the work I'm doing. I don't want to keep doing this if you freeloaders are going to keep coming in and stealing my glory, stealing my thunder, my reward, you reap where I have sowed. That's actually words on the lips of the wicked servant in the parable of the talents. He doesn't want to invest his master's talent that he's given because he says, "Master, you're someone who reached what you haven't sowed. I was going to do all this work, and you were going to steal my thunder, my glory. I wasn't going to be compensated well enough. The master says, you wicked servant at least invested in the banks.

Jesus says the promises, and maybe you're like this, I don't have the gift of evangelism in the sense that I see scores of people coming to Christ. I don't have that gift. I thank God for the people who have that gift because I don't have it. I'm faithful to evangelize with the hope that one day God is going to use some of these seeds that are scattered and people will come to Christ that I will maybe never see in this lifetime. Yet the promise is that the sower and the reaper will rejoice together. Others may enter into my work, I may enter into other's work, but all of us are called to work and the kingdom in this big group project called the church.

That's the mission that we're given; to make disciples by baptizing and teaching as we go. The question is, what does this actually look like? Does this mean that you have to be an elder or a deacon or teach a Sunday school class or lead a small group or have some official position, maybe to serve on the missions’ ministry team? If you do that and boy, you've fulfilled your calling, that' it, you can check that box off you've served. That's not really what Jesus talks about.

The Method of Our Ministry

The example that we are given to see what the format of ministry the method of ministry is to look like. As in versus thirty-nine through forty-two, we read about two different kinds of faith. In verse thirty-nine, we read that many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony that he told me all that I ever did. These Samaritans impress upon Jesus and they stay with him two days and we read the verse forty-one that many more believe because of his word. Then all of them say 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.

The method that this woman employs is not why she has a fancy title or position. She doesn't have a whole lot of training. She's just sort of sent into the vineyard to work. The only thing she's able to do is just say come and see, come and see. Here's what I experienced, this man exposed me for who I was, and he still loved me. Come and see for yourselves.

She realized that she was a thirsty sinner who had a little bit more knowledge, a little bit more access to, a little bit more experience of drinking from the living water that Jesus provides and she tells other thirsty sinners, you've got to come see this. So the faith that they have in the beginning takes a step forward, because they come and spend time directly with Jesus and their faith progresses and advances by a step. No longer do we believe, just on your testimony, that's legitimate faith we're told. I mean, children believe on the basis of what their parents teach them. Sometimes new converts believe, mainly on the basis of what you tell them to. The goal is not for that immature faith to stay as it is. The goal is for that faith to continue growing by direct experience with Jesus.

Now here's the thing I would give almost anything to spend two days with Jesus. Can you imagine that? If we had Jesus in for a conference, we wouldn't call it the conference, it'd be kind of demeaning. If we had Jesus in and we could talk to him for two days, what wouldn't we give to book Jesus?

Well, we have something better, don't we? Because the Samaritans only had him for two days. Jesus bodily ascended to the right hand of the Father in heaven, sent his Spirit and gave us his word so that we can reading about him, studying his life, hanging on his words, learn who this Jesus is in the spirit promises to help us. We have perpetual, ongoing, never lacking access to Jesus. It isn't always in the way that we want. He doesn't always give us the answers that we want. Jesus promises, in the great commission "Low, I will be with you even to the end of the age."

Weeks have gone by months, years, decades, centuries, millennia have gone by, and Jesus promises that he will still be with his church and he'll be with you as you talk to the person at your job, the person you meet on the street, as you talk to your children, as you talk to your parents, as you talk to your relatives, as you talk to anyone whom God puts in your path. You don't have to totally do everything that's required. Jesus, just ask you, OK, that's all I'm asking you to do. Help this person take one step closer to me. Ask a question. Invite them to church. Offer to read the Bible with them. All of us, these are things that we can do. Jesus promises us that we're not hacking it out there alone, left alone in the woods, being the sole person participating in the group project, but that none of our labor will be in vain. None of it will be in vain. The sower and the Reaper will rejoice together.

The question, then, is first, maybe you're here today because someone invited you, someone brought you here, because they want to help you take one step closer to Jesus. If that's the case, understand the gospel that Jesus Christ loved you enough to die for you so that you could come to faith in him and be quenched, have your thirst quenched in a living water that Jesus provides. If you were here and you don't exactly know what Jesus has called you to do, understand Jesus has sent you with the dignity of a worker in his kingdom to help the people that you know. I mean, I don't know, the elders don't know the people, you know. You are to help those people take one step closer to the kingdom. Ultimately, this is God's work. We plant, another waters, but it's only God who gives the growth. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 3:7. God is commissioning, sending us as his servants.

Pray with me. Heavenly Father, we ask, oh God, give us grace to lift up our eyes, from our busyness, from the monotony of our lives, from our crises, to recognize the fields are white for harvest, that what you are doing is far beyond what we could think or imagined, and that you have called us to a special place in that work. God, give us grace. Give us grace. We pray to see and love Jesus Christ and to recognize the deep thirst of the dying world around us. We pray God, that you would help us to serve out of compassion for those who need to hear the good news of Christ, also out of an insatiable love to see Jesus Christ exalted. We pray this in your Son's name. Amen.