When I am discouraged and in need of an uplifting and
encouraging word, I often turn to the accounts of King David in the historical
books of the Old Testament. One of my favorite stories about David is found in
2 Samuel 23. Seemingly homesick for the town of Bethlehem ,
David had said, “Oh that someone would give me water to drink from the well of Bethlehem which is by the
gate.” This cry was overheard by three of his closest companions, those men
that the Bible calls David’s “mighty men,” who took it upon themselves to
fulfill his longing. Bethlehem
was at that time occupied by the Philistines, and these three men risked their
lives to break through the Philistine camp and draw water from that well and
bring it back to David. When they returned to him and presented him with the
water, David refused to drink it and poured it out on the ground as an offering
to the Lord. Now, had you or I been one of those mighty men, we might have
punched David right in the teeth and said in angry disgust, “Do you know what I
just went through to get you that water! And now you are going to dump it out
on the ground?” But David said, “Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do
this. Shall I drink the blood of the men who went in jeopardy of their lives?”
In other words, David recognized that he was unworthy of such faithful devotion
on the part of his mighty men. David considered only the Lord worthy of that
kind of devoted sacrifice, so he poured out the water as an offering to the
Lord.
Now, David had a son, and he had a son, and he had a son. So
on and so on we go for 1,000 years until we come to his ultimate descendant,
the Lord Jesus Christ. When we find Him here in our text, He’s been walking for
two solid days with His disciples, and they’ve come into the town of Sychar in Samaria .
Since they had no food, the disciples left Jesus by the famed well of the
patriarch Jacob and went into a nearby town to buy some food. Though they had
not risked their lives like David’s mighty men had, they had risked public
scrutiny buying food from Samaritans that Jews would ordinarily consider unfit
to eat. While they were gone, Jesus struck up a conversation with an unnamed
Samaritan woman. That act would have been considered extremely scandalous for
people of that day, as it was considered inappropriate for a man to speak
publicly with a woman, much less a Samaritan woman. The Jews despised the
Samaritans, and considered all Samaritan women to be in a state of perpetual
uncleanness from birth. But this didn’t stop Jesus from initiating conversation
with her. He didn’t seem to give much heed to the manmade customs of His day.
During His conversation with the Samaritan woman, they’ve talked about what it
means to truly worship God; they’ve talked about her sinful past; and Jesus has
offered her living water that would forever satisfy her spiritual thirst and
spring up into eternal life.
It is the midst of this conversation that the disciples
returned with the food. John tells us that they were amazed to find Jesus
speaking with this woman, yet they did not question her by asking, “What do you
seek?” Had they done so, they would have likewise been guilty of breaking
custom by initiating conversation with a despised Samaritan woman. Nor did they
question Jesus by asking, “Why do you speak with her?” There were gradually
coming to understand that, though Jesus didn’t always do what people expected
Him to do, He always did rightly, and always had a divine purpose in all the
things that He did. When the woman went away, the disciples unpacked the lunch
that they had gone to purchase for Jesus and urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
But notice, Jesus did not say, “Oh, thanks My friends! Bagels and Lox, My
favorite!” Like His ancestor David with his mighty men, Jesus refused to eat
the food that these men had gone and acquired for Him. It wasn’t that Jesus,
like David, considered Himself unworthy of such a sacrifice. As the fully
divine God-man, Jesus is supremely worthy of all sacrifice and service that we
can offer Him. Rather, Jesus says, “I have food to eat that you do not know
about.”
Imagine you are one of those disciples. Though you yourself
are tired and hungry, you’ve gone a great distance into a sketchy town on the
wrong side of the tracks, constantly looking around to make sure no one notices
you breaking cultural customs, risking public humiliation, spending your own
money, to buy Jesus a meal. You bring it back to Him and He says essentially,
“Thanks but no thanks, I’m not really hungry. I’ve got some other food that you
don’t know about.” Would you even know how to respond to that? They didn’t!
They didn’t say a word to Him, but instead started murmuring to each other,
“Who brought Him a sandwich? Where’d He get food? Did He have His own private
stash that He didn’t tell us about?” They want to know, what is this food that
Jesus has? Don’t you want to know? Well, let’s find out here in the text.
I. The food of Jesus is to do the will of His Father
Are there any foodies
here? I remember some years ago when the cable company said they were adding a
new channel to the lineup that was going to be entirely dedicated to food
programs. I remember thinking, “Who wants to watch food shows all day?” Well,
in short, foodies want to watch it, and the Food Network has become one of the
most watched of all cable television channels. There’s a lot of foodies out
there. Foodies love food. They love cooking, they love eating, they love
restaurants, they love grocery stores, they love kitchens. They aren’t gluttons
necessarily, they just love food. One foodie told me once, “I live to eat.”
That’s interesting – he lives to eat.
Only a few people would say that the live to eat, but all of us eat to live. We eat because our bodies
need nutrients. God has designed our bodies to need food, and to amazingly
transform the food we eat into energy that enables our bodies to do what they
have to do for our survival. So we may not all live to eat, but we all eat to
live. We eat so that we will have the sustenance to do what we have to do.
Jesus, being not only fully God but also fully human, was not exempt from this.
He experienced hunger just like we do. He ate food just like we do. But Jesus
knew that, though man lives by bread, man does not live by bread alone. When He was tempted to turn a
stone into bread in the wilderness, He responded to Satan by saying, “Man shall
not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of
God.” He was quoting Deuteronomy 8:3. There Moses was telling the people that
God had humbled them as He led them through the wilderness, and He let them
become hungry, and provided them with manna, in order to make them understand
that man does not live by bread alone, but
man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord. The Word of
God is more essential to your life than the food you eat.
Jesus says here that the food which sustains Him to do what
He has to do is not bread or meat. Rather, doing
what He has come to do sustains Him to
do what He has come to do. His food,
that which He needs, that which sustains Him, is “to do the will of Him who
sent Me and to accomplish His work.” He doesn’t need a sandwich. He sustained
by obeying and fulfilling the mission which His Father had sent Him to
accomplish. And what He had come to do was to announce to broken and sinful
people that they could have eternal life in Him. He was doing that just now,
with the Samaritan woman, and in so doing Jesus was enjoying a feast of
sustenance that surpassed any buffet meal you could imagine. He didn’t need
what the disciples had brought Him to eat; He was sustained by the doing of His
Father’s will.
It’s a funny thing about food – sometimes we are eager to
share our food with others and sometimes we are not. For example, if we go to
an Indian restaurant and order different items, I will probably want to try
yours and I will want you to try mine. And then there are those bizarre times
that we eat something so bad that we say, “Oh, this is horrible! Here, taste
it!” Why would anyone ever accept that offer? But, let’s say we are in Philadelphia at my
favorite cheese-steak place, there’s no way you are getting a bite of my
sandwich, and I don’t want any of yours. I know what I want there, and that’s
what I ordered, and I’m going to eat every bite of it, and you can’t have any,
so don’t even ask. But Jesus is not like that with the food that He has. His
food is to do the will of His Father, and He delights to share this food with
others. He finds joy in others being sustained by the doing of His Father’s
will as well.
Remember that the woman has come to draw water. This was
likely a daily routine for her. The water that she would draw every day would
be used for drinking, for cooking, for cleaning, and for washing. It was
essential. But once she meets Jesus and understands who He is and hears His
offer of living water that can satisfy her in a way that no other water can,
she leaves her waterpot behind (v28) and sets herself about the task of doing
the Father’s will. She has not only been a hearer of the gospel of Jesus, she
has become a proclaimer of this good news. She leaves the waterpot behind and
goes into the city and says to everyone, “Come, see a man who told me all the
things that I have done; this is not the Christ is it?” Though she has not yet
become totally aware of the full significance of who He is and what He has come
to do, she has come to realize that the most important task she could set
herself about is to introduce as many others as possible to this stranger. He
knew all that could be known about her, including her sinful history, and
offered her the gift of eternal life anyway. Surely others need to meet Him and
hear this good news as well.
You may be like this woman. You may have a sinful past that
brings you pain and shame, and wonder if God would ever accept you. But this
woman is a beautiful illustration of grace, for in spite of her sins, the Lord
Jesus offers her the living water that springs up into eternal life. Jesus came
to rescue sinners! He did it for her, and He can do it for you. And though you
may think that He could never use you to serve Him because of the things you
have done, notice here how quickly and how effectively this woman finds herself
in His service. She is involved in the mission of Jesus to take the saving
promises of God to other sinners. She’s forgotten all about the reason she came
to the well in the first place, and found her thirst quenched by the living
water of Christ and her hunger satisfied by doing the Father’s will. And, let
me tell you, if the Lord can use her, He can use me. And if He can use me, I
know He can use you! It is often the case that “the most unlikely soul may
prove the most effective witness” for Jesus.[1]
So, the opportunity to be a part of God’s work in the world by sharing the good
news of Jesus should not lay heavy on you like a burden. Rather, it should be
welcomed as an offer of Jesus to share with you the marvelous food that
sustains Him. This Samaritan woman was willing to walk away from her waterpot
to tell everyone she could find about Jesus, and she found herself sustained by
the food that Jesus has. Are we willing to put aside the things that preoccupy
our minds, the things we think we cannot live without, the things we think
sustain us, and share in the food that Jesus has?
II. The food that Jesus has is ready for harvest.
We met a family in Vermont
that has recently moved from Boston
to begin homesteading. They bought a farm and are trying to raise all their own
food and become self-sufficient. I told them that if I were to try to do that,
I would die of starvation. Some people have a green thumb; I guess I kind of
have a brown thumb. Everything I’ve ever tried to grow has died. The produce
section of the grocery store is about the closest I ever come to farming or gardening,
so sometimes it is easy to forget when I sit down for a meal that the things I
am eating had their beginnings on a farm somewhere. Your vegetables and fruit
began as seeds in the ground. Your bread began as a seed that grew into a
grain. There was sowing, and there was reaping, and there were other processes
that brought those things to your table. And in a sense, the food that Jesus
has is like that. It involves a process of sowing and reaping, and He says here
that His food is ready for harvest.
Now, everyone who has ever grown anything knows that there
is a time that passes between the time the seed is put in the ground and the
time for harvesting. In verse 35, Jesus reminds the disciples of a commonly
used saying in that day. He says, “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months
and then comes the harvest.’” That was the generally accepted time frame that
would elapse between the last of the sowing and the first of the reaping. So,
this became a saying that encouraged patience, much like we say, “Rome wasn’t built in a
day.” They would say, “There are four months between the sowing and the
harvest.” But Jesus is telling his disciples here that, though that may be true
when it comes to growing normal food, the sustaining food of His Father’s will
is not always like this. The seed of the Gospel that He has sown into the life
of the Samaritan woman is bearing fruit already, and the seed that she has sown
in the city is also growing ripe for harvest before their very eyes. Jesus is
saying, “You don’t have to wait for this harvest! Lift up your eyes and look on
the fields! They are white for harvest!” If the disciples would but just lift
their eyes and look, they would see a multitude from the Samaritan city coming
out to meet Jesus in response to the seed that had only just been planted by
the woman. And this harvest was abundant. Verse 39 says that “from that city, MANY of the Samaritans believed in Him
because of the word of the woman.” The time for harvest was not four months
away, it was now! Jesus said, “Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is
gathering fruit for life eternal.” The reaper of this harvest is not sitting
idly by and waiting for something to happen. The time has come for the
spiritual reaping of a harvest of souls who have received the good seed of the
Gospel and eternal life is springing up before their very eyes.
No longer is the sower to be discouraged that he will not
see the result of his back-breaking labor. No longer is the reaper to lose
sight of the fact that others have labored before him to plow the ground and
plant the seed. Jesus says that now the sower and the reaper rejoice together.
The Lord had declared through the prophet Amos centuries before, “Behold, days
are coming when the plowman will overtake the reaper and the treader of grapes
him who sows seed.” And with the advent of the Messiah Jesus, that day has
come. The seed of the Gospel can be sown in expectancy, knowing that in this
seed is the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:16), and where it lands in good
soil, a harvest is imminent. We don’t have to sit and wait, or be discouraged
and wonder if the harvest will ever come. There is joy to be found in sowing,
because we will see and share in the joy of reaping. One may sow and another
may reap, but we rejoice together knowing that as we share the good news of
Jesus with a world perishing in sin, we are engaged in doing the will of our
Father and joining Jesus in His mission.
Jesus tells the disciples, “I sent you to reap that for
which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into
their labor.” While they were out getting sandwiches in town, Jesus was sowing
Gospel seed. While they’ve been trying to figure out why Jesus was talking to
that woman, and what kind of mystery meat He’s been hiding from them, the
Samaritan woman has been sowing Gospel seed. Though they missed out on the
sowing this time, Jesus says, “There is a harvest walking right toward us even
now – many Samaritans – and you can be involved in the harvest.” Every time we have
the opportunity to lead a soul to Jesus, we are joining in a work that God has
been doing for a long time in that person’s life. Others have sown seed, the
Holy Spirit has been moving in his or her heart, and we get to take part in the
harvest. In the same way, even when we don’t get to see the harvest, we know
that as we plant the seed of the Gospel into someone’s life, we are joining
Jesus in His mission to redeem the world from sin and destruction. Nothing is
more satisfying and sustaining that this! This is the food that sustains Jesus
and He shares it with us by inviting us to join Him in this work.
I told you as we began today that one of my favorite stories
about David was about how his mighty men risked their lives to bring him water
from Bethlehem ’s
well. Another one of my favorite episodes from the life of David comes from 2
Samuel 9 and has to do with David’s kindness to the house of Saul. Though David
had been despised by Saul as a threat and a rival, he had enjoyed a tremendous
friendship with Saul’s son Jonathan. Saul and Jonathan had both died, and David
was now the king, and one day he asked if there were any surviving members of
the household of Saul that he might show kindness to on Jonathan’s behalf. He
was told about Jonathan’s son who had been lame since childhood. His name was
Mephibosheth, and when he was brought to David, the King welcomed him and
promised to provide for him, and extended an open invitation to dine at the
royal table regularly as if he was a son of the king. He had done nothing to
deserve it. He was incapable of earning a place at that table, for the Bible
tells us repeatedly that he was lame in both feet. But because of the kind
mercy of the king, this lame and undeserving son of David’s enemy was welcome
to partake of his food.
It would have been deemed highly inappropriate for
Mephibosheth to ask for a place at the king’s table, and if he had, he could
not have expected for his wish to be granted. In a similar way, the Samaritan
people who had come out to Jesus did something that many would have considered
inappropriate. Remember that Jews and Samaritans didn’t like each other. It was
a mutual hatred. But these Samaritans urged this Jewish Messiah to stay with
them! If that weren’t surprising enough, the Lord Jesus stayed with them two
days. And during that time, He continued sowing and reaping, harvesting the
food of His Father’s will and seeing eternal life sprouting all around the
city. Though many had believed because of the testimony of the woman, verse 41
says that many more believed because
of His word. Her words influenced them to believe in Him, but it was their
personal encounter with Him that convinced them that He was the Savior, not of
Jews or Samaritans alone, but the Savior of the entire world. It is a wonderful
privilege to bring the good news of the Savior to a lost and dying world, but
our testimony is only a starting point. The people with whom we sow the seed of
the gospel must come to a place of personal encounter with the Lord Jesus and
meet Him personally if they would truly know that Him as Savior.
Jesus has food that others know nothing about. His food is
to do the will of His Father, to carry out the mission of bringing salvation to
the world. He completed His work of redemption on the cross as He died for the
sins of the world and conquered sin and death through His resurrection. Once we
have met Him and trusted Him as Savior, He invites us to partake of His food,
to join Him in this mission of redemption by sowing the seed of the gospel and
reaping the harvest of eternal life as others place their trust in Him. Yet, so
few of His people seem to be enjoying the satisfaction of this spiritual food.
Why is that? There are some clues here in this text.
First, many of us are like the disciples, in that we just
don’t get it. When Jesus talks about the food that He has, the disciples can’t
think in any other categories besides the earthly and physical realm. They
wonder who brought Him food. That’s the problem that some of us have. We are
too fixated on the things of this world. Even now, some of us are looking at
our watches and thinking, “Speaking of food, I wonder what’s for lunch today?”
Little do we know that before we exit this building, there may be an
opportunity to sow the seed of the Gospel, or to reap in the Gospel harvest and
so to partake of a far more satisfying food than anything that we can put in
our mouths at the lunch table. You are thinking you may starve to death if you
have to wait ten more minutes for lunch. That’s simply not true. Studies show
that you can go a lot longer without food than you think you can, and Jesus
says that you can partake of the food of doing His Father’s will and find
yourself sustained in unimaginable and seldom experienced ways. We must be ware
of the subtle idolatries that surround us in the world – our preferences, our
comforts, our personal desires. The Apostle Paul warns us against setting our
minds on earthly things in Philippians 3:19, saying that those who do so serve
their appetites as gods. We are thinking about the momentary satisfaction of a
ham sandwich, when the eternally satisfying food of Christ is available to us
if we will deny ourselves and join Him in His mission.
Second, we are missing out on the food of Christ because we
are not lifting our eyes and looking to the fields. We are discouraged,
disappointed and dissatisfied with the things in our very small personal
universes. Jesus says, “Lift up your eyes,” look beyond the immediate things
and look upon the eternal things. Fix your eyes on the fields and see that God
is bringing about a harvest in the world. Why don’t we see it? We are looking
at ourselves, we are looking at each other, we are inspecting the other farmers
and the barn while the harvest is ripe and rotting in the field. Wherever there
is a church that is being torn apart by internal strife, I guarantee you that
church has lost sight of the mission of Christ! If we were busy with the sowing
of the Gospel seed and the reaping of the Gospel harvest, we would have no time,
no energy, and no interest in bickering with each other about petty matters. Are
you unsatisfied with your spiritual life, or with the spiritual atmosphere of
the church? Then hear the Lord Jesus as He beckons you to lift up your eyes and
look on the fields, and see that they are white for harvest! There is a
satisfying and sustaining meal set before you – the food that Christ has – if
you will join in His mission of salvation in the world, in this city, and in
your own community! But you have to set your eyes on the harvest if you are
going to participate in it. Where are you looking? What are you seeing?
In Luke 10:2, Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the
laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out
laborers into His harvest.” And it is very interesting that in the very next
verse, He says, “Go; behold, I send you out.” Do you want to see that harvest?
Do you want to see souls coming to Jesus? He says that the harvest is ripe, but
the laborers are few. Are you praying for God to send laborers into the harvest
field? As you do, remember that you may very well be the answer to the prayer
you are praying. He desires to send you out
to join in this joyful task of sowing and reaping. Charles Spurgeon once said,
“Are we not getting weary of living in this world among so many who are going
to hell? Is it not terrible to think that after all the church is doing,
thousands are being lost every day? We ought to bestir ourselves for men’s
souls.”[2]
Yes, we must bestir ourselves for souls, and join Christ in the harvest by
sowing and reaping and find ourselves strengthened, sustained, and satisfied by
His food that the world knows nothing about.
[1] F. F.
Bruce, The Gospel and Epistles of John (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970, 1983), 1:115.
[2] Charles
Spurgeon, The Power of Prayer in a
Believer’s Life, quoted but not cited in unpublished lecture notes from my
own Evangelism class, taught at Winston-Salem
Bible College
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