Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 514. 514 in your hardbacked hymnal. Let's all stand together. 514. Come we that love the Lord, and
let our joys be known. Join in a song with sweet accord. Join in a song with sweet accord. And thus surround the throne. And thus surround the throne. We're marching to Zion, beautiful,
beautiful Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. Let those refuse to sing who
never knew our God. But children of the heavenly
King, But children of the heavenly King, May speak their joys abroad,
May speak their joys abroad. We're marching to Zion, beautiful,
beautiful Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. ? Of Zion yields a thousand sacred
sweets ? Before we reach the heavenly fields ? Before we reach
the heavenly fields ? Or walk the golden streets ? Or walk
the golden streets ? We're marching to Zion Beautiful, beautiful
Zion, we're marching upward to Zion, the beautiful city of God. ? Then let our songs abound and
every tear be dry ? We're marching through Emmanuel's ground ? We're
marching through Emmanuel's ground ? To fairer worlds on high, to
fairer worlds on high ? We're marching to Zion Beautiful, beautiful
Zion. We're marching upward to Zion,
the beautiful city of God. Please be seated. Good morning. As we were singing that hymn,
I couldn't help but to think about how many generations of
believers have sung that hymn and are now in Zion and have
rejoiced in hope just as we are able to do this morning. The
Lord gave those words to Isaac Watts They've been such an incredible
blessing to God's people for so many years. If you'd like to open your Bibles
with me to John chapter 4. John chapter 4. What a blessing
this chapter has been as we've considered the woman at the well.
and the mercy that the Lord showed to her and how he revealed himself
to her. And now she's run back down to
the city where she was from and said to everyone there, come,
come meet a man who told me all things that ever I did. And we're
gonna pick up now where The disciples have returned and they're wondering
why the Lord had been even talking to the Samaritan woman. But as
they speak with him, the people of Sychar that were at best,
at least intrigued by the words of this woman now are coming
out of the town to where the Lord is, and that's the scene. So let's ask the Lord's blessings
on our time. Our merciful heavenly Father,
thank you for the hope that you've put into the hearts of your people,
of knowing that the Lord Jesus has prepared a place for us and
that he will come again and receive us unto himself so that where
he is, there we shall be also. Thank you for the comfort and
joy that you give to our hearts as we wait on thee. Lord, we
pray this morning that your Holy Spirit would minister grace to
us and Lord that you would give eyes to see and ears to hear
or that we would not hear the voice of a man, but that we would
hear nothing less than than the voice of God that you would speak
effectually to our hearts. And she would call us to set
our affections on things above where Christ is seated at thy
right hand. Lord, we confess that our affections
have been far too much on the things of this world. And we
thank you for the forgiveness of sin. We thank you for the
blessing of worship. Lord, might we be able by the
power of your spirit and by the revelation of truth in Christ
to experience worship this morning. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen. Verse 29 of John chapter four. Come, see a man, which told me
all things that ever I did. Is not this the Christ? That's
every believer's testimony. Come see a man, the God man. And he told me that everything
that I ever did, that I ever did outside of him was sinful,
everything. and everything that I ever did
in him was perfectly righteous and holy in the sight of God.
Come, is not this the Christ? Can anyone, can any man minister
such hope and grace and light to a sinner's heart than this
man? And in verse 30, and they went
out of the city and came unto him. So here's the scene now.
The disciples were just down there. They knew so much more
about who the Lord Jesus was and what he came to do. They
had been taught by him now for some time. And yet they didn't breathe a
word that just outside the gates of their little town on a hill
where there was a well, the Son of God sat. They never even thought
of telling any of the Samaritans, for they would have believed
that the Samaritans were beyond the scope of salvation. The Lord, the scripture says,
I must needs go through Samaria. That's what the Lord said. When
the disciples wanted to go around Samaria, like all Jews would
have done, the Lord Jesus said, no, I must needs go through Samaria. There's a woman there that I'm
gonna meet at high noon and I'm gonna reveal myself to her. And
I have other sheep that are not of this fold. And they're going
to come as a result of her testimony, and they're going to believe
when they hear me. I must needs go through some
area because I've got some lost sheep there. And the Lord still
is doing that. He's not going to lose one of
his sheep. He knows where every one of them is. And he will call
them to himself one way or the other. But there's a second reason why
I must needs go through Samaria. And that is that the disciples
had a very, very important lesson that they needed to learn. And that's the lesson that I
hope the Lord will teach us this morning. And by way of introduction,
I want to share with you something that the Lord did for me this
morning that was of great encouragement to me. And I hope that it will
be for you. And I'll start this story by
reminding you that prayer doesn't change God. It changes us. It's essential that we pray,
that we might have, through that exercise of prayer, eyes to see
what God's doing. You see, when we don't pray,
God will be doing things that we can't, we don't have any concept
of it, we don't have any understanding of it, we don't have any experience
with it. But when we pray, and then the
Lord answers that prayer, we are brought to see his hand at
work in such a powerful way. And it's not our prayers that
change things, it was our prayers that changed us, enabling us
to enter in to what God was doing, and to rejoice in what God was
doing, and to glorify the Lord for what he was doing, something
that we never would have been able to do had we not prayed.
Now I say all that in order to say that the Lord put on my heart
this morning to pray for some of you. Early this morning, we
got an extra hour's sleep last night, so I was up earlier than
normal. And one of the families that I was praying for was the
Beliza family. And I just felt burdened for
them for some reason. And within about 30 minutes afterwards, I got a text from Gina. And Gina
was in Columbia, where she's from. And she began to tell me that
she went there to hopefully have an opportunity to share the gospel
with her mother before she died. And yesterday, her mother passed
away. She was there for some time before
her mother passed away and had an opportunity to share the gospel
with her mother, and even had her mother listening to some
messages. Of course, she speaks Spanish.
She had her mother listening to some of Cody Gruber's old
messages. And she said, my mother was actually
listening to Cody when she died yesterday. And I had no idea that she was
down there. I had no idea any of that was
going on. But the Lord gave me that experience this morning
to confirm what he was teaching me from his word. Or to, I don't
know if the word confirm is it, but to validate, if you will. I don't know. You understand
what I'm saying. I believed what God was, not
that we need experiences to validate or confirm what God has said.
God has said it, that settles it, we believe it. But what a
sweet thing it is when the Lord enables us to enter into what
he has revealed in our experiences. And that's what happened to me
this morning. And I hope by extension that you will be able to have
that. experience with me and that you'll
be encouraged to be more diligent and fervent. It encouraged me. Lord, I don't pray as I ought.
I'm ashamed of how little I pray. And yet, when God does something
like that, it makes me not only more ashamed of how little I
pray, but it makes me want to pray more. And it makes me want
to be more of a fervent witness of him. And that is this story
this morning. Because as the disciples were
unfaithful, In sharing, I don't know, Gina doesn't know, we don't
know what the Lord may have done for her mother. Our hope is that
she heard something and the Lord gave her faith to believe on
Christ. That's completely in the Lord's hands. But Gina's just thankful that
she had an opportunity to be there and to share with her mother
before she died. These disciples, like us oftentimes,
were so unfaithful to even breathe a word to any of the people in
Sychar about who they had with them. And this woman, this adulterous,
fornicating woman who had been married five times and was living
with a man now that wasn't her husband, who knew so little about
who the Lord was except that he had told her everything that
ever she did. Boldly, simply, without hesitation runs back
down to the very town that she would have been the shame of,
that's why she was there in the middle of the day, and unapologetically heralds
the message of the gospel. This is our mandate. That's the title of this message,
Our Mandate. What has God mandated us to do? What is our call from God? In the meanwhile, verse 31. His
disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. And he said to them,
I have meat to eat that you know not of. Wherefore saith the disciples
one to another, hath any man brought him out to eat? And Jesus
saith unto them, my meat is to do the will of him that sent
me and to finish his work. My whole purpose in coming is
to accomplish the work that the father gave me to do. And that he was successful in
accomplishing. When he bowed his mighty head
on Calvary's cross and he cried, it is finished, it is finished. Father into thy hands, I commend
my spirit. He went before his heavenly father
confident that he had done everything that the father sent him to do.
Now, none of us can say that. We would not. And yet, when the
Lord calls us to himself, he puts into our hearts a desire
to do his work. Does he not? Is that not the
believer's heart's desire? My mate is to do the will of
my father. Is that not our meat? To do the will of our Father?
To follow, to believe on Christ, to follow after Him? To come before Him in prayer, to
be a faithful witness? My meat is to do the will of
my Father. Now that's the backdrop to what
the Lord's going to now do in gently, lovingly rebuke these
disciples and at the same time teach them and prepare them for
the work that God had given them to do. What is the work of God? Is it
not to save his people? Is that not what the Lord Jesus
came to do? Is that not what he has commissioned
his church to carry the message of? And we know that we don't
save anybody, salvation's of the Lord. And yet God in his
infinite wisdom has purposed his church with the mandate of
taking the gospel to the world, we are God's sheepdog. We're
not trying to, the purpose of the church is not to change the
social settings of the world or to get involved in politics. The purpose of the church is
to declare the gospel of God's free grace in the finished work
of the Lord Jesus Christ, knowing that God's lost sheep will hear
it and they'll believe it and they'll come. We're not trying
to make goats look like sheep. We're looking for God's sheep.
And yet that's our mandate. That's our work. Turn with me
over to John chapter 14. John chapter 14. Everything else we do, Labor
not for the meat which perishes. Now you and I labor a lot for
perishing meat. We do. But the Lord said, don't
make that your life. Christ is your life. Those things
are all temporal. Those things are fading away.
Those things are of no eternal consequence. The one thing that
is of eternal consequence, the one thing that will last forever
is the salvation of God's people. That's what we labor for. John chapter 14, look at verse
11. Believe me that I'm in the Father
and the Father in me or else believe me for the very works
sake. Now the Lord's referring to the
miracles that he performed. And he's saying to his disciples,
no man can do the works that I do. These miracles are supernatural.
These miracles, are proof that the Father is in me, and I am
in the Father, and that what I speak is the word of God, and
that who I am is the word of God. And then he says this most astonishing
thing. Verily, verily, I say unto you,
he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also
and greater works than these shall he do because I go to my
father. And whatsoever you shall ask
in my name, that will I do that the father may be glorified in
the son. You see, The works that the Lord's referring
to that he did, the miracles, the man that was given sight,
was blind, the cripple that was able to walk, even the dead that were raised
from the dead, all those miracles were pictures, they were typical,
they were types of of a greater miracle, the miracle of salvation. And all those physical miracles
only change things for a short period of time. But the miracles that he's now
saying, the works that I do, greater works than these shall
you do because I go to my father and when I go to my father, I'm
gonna send the Holy Spirit And when I send the Holy Spirit,
you are going to be my witnesses. Now what the Lord said, the last
words of the Lord Jesus before he ascended off Mount of Olives
and was carried up through the clouds into heaven was to his
disciples. You go back to Jerusalem, the
Holy Ghost to come upon you, you're gonna be my witnesses.
That's your mandate. In Jerusalem and Samaria, Samaria. Judea and Samaria and then the
uttermost parts of the world. Yes, even to the Gentiles, you're
gonna be my witnesses. All power, all power has been given unto
me. That means we don't have any
power. We take no glory or credit for any success that the gospel
has. We're just planting seeds. If he doesn't send the rain and
the sun, those seeds aren't going to grow. He gets all the glory. Paul said,
I planted, Apollos watered, God gave the increase. God gets all
the glory. But greater works than these
you shall do, because I go to my Father. All powers being given
unto me, that means you don't have any power. I have all the
power. Go ye therefore unto my Father. unto all nations, baptizing
them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,
teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded
you. And lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the earth." That's our mandate. And that's
what the Lord's going to use. This is why he needed to go through
Samaria, because these disciples had something to learn. He had
already told them, I'm going to make you fishers of men. But
now he's going to use the analogy of planting and harvesting to
show them what their purpose is, what their call is, what
their mandate is. Go back with me to our text. Verse 35, say not ye. Now from the details that are
given us in these chapters, we know that the time of the year
is early summer, probably sometime in June when this is happening. And everything's green and flourishing. And I can just see the disciples
coming back up the hill from Sychar. and they're walking through
the fields that the Samaritans have planted, and they're having
this conversation with one another, you know it's gonna be four more
months before harvest. The Lord knew, just like he knows
you and me, our words before we speak them, he knows our hearts.
And, And he says to these disciples, say not ye there are yet four
months and then cometh harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift
up your eyes and look on the fields for they are white already
to harvest. Can you see this woman bringing
a crowd up from Sychar? And the Lord says to these disciples,
I know what you're talking about. You're talking about harvesting
wheat. You're talking about physical food. You went to buy physical
food. You missed the whole point of
what real meat is. You've labored for that meat
which perisheth. But that meat which leadeth to
everlasting life, look, there it comes. Look at her. And he said, look, the fields
are already white unto harvest. They're coming right now. Oh, that the Lord would give us such
a spirit of grace to believe Him. You know, that's one of
the blessings of prayer, is that when we pray and then we see
God's hand at work, it increases our faith. It makes us want to
pray more. It makes us to believe God. The greatest evidence of our
unbelief is our lack of prayer. And prayer is faith being exercised. Lord, help thou mine unbelief.
Lord, increase our faith. Isn't that what the disciples
said? And the Lord Jesus said, pray
to the Lord of the harvest that he would send forth laborers
unto the harvest. I have lost sheep out there.
Pray for them. Verse 36, and he that reapeth
receiveth wages and gathereth fruit unto eternal life. that
both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together.
And hearing is that saying true, one soweth and another reapeth.
I sent you to reap whereof you bestowed no labor. Other men
labored and are entered in to your labors." A lot more labor
involved in planting and caring for the crop than there is in
harvesting. Harvesting is the fun time. The Lord said, if I give you
an opportunity to be a part of a harvest, there's someone that went before
you that labored a whole lot more than you did. There's another lesson here that
I want to go back to that I mentioned a moment ago. These disciples
never would have thought that the Samaritans were even on God's
radar. They never would have considered
them to be possible sheep of God. You know,
we can't tell who God's sheep are, can we? Over the years,
I've found myself getting very excited about someone who shows
enthusiasm about the gospel only to watch them fall away. And
then to see someone else who I think, you know, they've got
no interest at all. They sleep through messages.
They don't, you know, they don't show any enthusiasm about what
they're hearing. They never talk about the gospel. And then the Lord puts his hand
on them and calls them and they're faithful to the end. We just
can't tell. Outward appearances. don't mean
much. It's God that works at the heart.
Man looks at the outward appearance. God works on the heart and God
looks at the heart. This is God's work. This is our
mandate, to be able to share in the work of God with God himself. Now don't think for a moment
Well, if I don't share the gospel, if I don't pray for somebody,
there's a chance that their blood will be on my hand and they'll
be lost and they'll go to hell. They could have been saved. That
will never, ever, ever happen. If I fail to share and to pray
as I ought, God will raise up somebody else and somebody else
will do it. But not one of God's sheep's
gonna be lost. He's gonna bring every one of them to himself.
You see, this isn't about us saving the world. This isn't
about us helping God out. God doesn't need any help. This
is God's blessing to us, giving us the privilege and the blessing
of being able to share with him in his work. That's what this
is about. And what a blessing it is. when
the Lord enables you to pray and when he enables you to just
share simply or to rejoice with a brother or sister over what
you're hearing. What a blessing that is. The other thing that I see in
this story is that the gospel is so contrary to everything
that we believe by nature. that it often causes a sincere
inquirer and even a new believer to think and to say stupid things. Think about how spiritually stupid
you've been. I think about how spiritually
stupid I've been on so many occasions and still am. Let us be careful,
the Lord is gently taking these disciples who don't even think
that Samaritans are a possibility for salvation and he's teaching
them, this is why I must need to go through Samaria, I'm going
to instruct you. Even later, after Pentecost and
after the Holy Spirit comes, Peter has a hard time going to
Cornelius' house, who was even farther out of the picture as
far as the Jewish mind was concerned than were the Samaritans. Cornelius
was a Gentile. Lord, I've never eaten anything
that was unclean. And what did the Lord say to
Peter? Peter, don't call that unclean which I've made clean.
You go and you preach the gospel. You see, these disciples were
having a hard time in their Jewish thought. For centuries, they
had thought you have to be a part of Israel. You have to be a part
of the Jews in order to be within
hope of salvation. And the Lord's instructing them
and directing them and teaching them. And you get to Acts chapter
15 and all the apostles get together and they have what's called the
Jerusalem Council because Paul comes back from the Gentile world
and begins to tell these stories about what God was doing in saving
the Gentiles. And some of the apostles said,
that can't be. And Paul got up and told the
stories and they said, well, must be, must be. What are you and I to learn from
this? Let's be gentle like the Lord
with one another and with those who come in. And they hear something
and they don't understand it. And what they hear is so contrary
to what they've always believed, just like these disciples, that
they can't process it. And they might ask dumb questions
or say things that are inappropriate. And I've seen believers do it. I've seen believers jump on people
and criticize them and shame them for thinking that way. Don't
do that. Wait, let's just gently take
them. Let me show you a verse of scripture. Turn with me to
2 Timothy 2. 2 Timothy 2. Verse 23. But foolish and unlearned
questions, avoid. knowing that they do gender stripes.
Now, I'm not saying that we throw our pearls before swine or that,
you know, that we We tolerate someone who is obstinate and
argumentative and self-justifying. There are those people that we
share the gospel with who don't have any interest in the gospel.
They rebut everything you say. And what'd the Lord say? Leave them alone. They're blind
guys leading the blind. They're all gonna fall into the
dish. Just leave them alone. Don't even mess with that. Don't
even go there. Verse 24, and the servant of
the Lord must not strive, but be gentle unto all men, apt to
teach, patient in meekness, instructing those that oppose themselves,
if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging
of the truth, and that they may recover themselves out of the
snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will. Let's not Let's not boost our own ego by
proving someone wrong, by unduly criticizing them. Let us be gentle
and teach them. I can remember when I first met
Todd Nyberg and he came to my home and started sharing the
gospel with me and I said some stuff. It was so ridiculous. I remember some of the things
I said to him. And he just looked at me lovingly. He said, well, I don't believe
that. That's all he said, I don't believe that. It's all he needed
to say. Lord's saying here that others
have planted and you are harvesting what their work has done. It's
the Holy Spirit that plants the seed. It's, you know, these Samaritans,
they had portions of God's scripture. They knew what the Word of God
said. How many have labored for so many years and they saw nothing
and then all of a sudden the Lord shines the light of day
on those seeds and they come to life. Perhaps in your yard you have
a weed called nutsedge. We've got some in our yard and
it's hard to kill. You've got to go underground
and find every one of those little hard nuts and get them up or
they're going to come back. You pull it up, it just comes
back from that. I remember years and years ago, this was 45 years
ago, I was living in Alabama and a friend of mine had a shed
in his backyard that, that thing looked to me like it was 100
years old. It was falling down, it was an old barn. probably
20 feet by 20 feet. And one day he tore it down.
And we got everything moved out of the way, and there's this
20 foot by 20 foot patch of dirt, just dirt, underneath that old
barn. And I went back a week or two
later, and that whole 20 foot by 20 foot patch was solid nutsedge. I mean it was green and lush
and those little kernels had been in that dirt for all those
years. And as soon as the sun came out
and as soon as the water fell, those things germinated and came
to life. Yeah, that's the way God does
it sometimes. You plant a seed. maybe years
before it produces life. Someone else prays, someone else
shares something. You know, it's not about results. It's about a steward of God is
to be found faithful. Faithful. This is our mandate. The field is widened to harvest.
Lord, give me the faith to believe. Give me the faith to share as
I ought. Give me the faith to tell people what you've done,
the work that you have accomplished, how you are pleased to have mercy
upon sinners and take them out of darkness and bring them into
your marvelous light. And I'll just close with this. God is pleased. I hope this is
an encouragement to you. It is to me. God is pleased to
use the most unlikely, weakest, feeblest, unbelieving servants
to accomplish his purpose that he might get all the glory. when the Lord Jesus chose his
disciples. He didn't go into the Sanhedrin
and take from the Sanhedrin those Jewish leaders that were well-learned
in the scriptures. He took ignorant and unlearned
fishermen. It's what the scripture says
about them. They were ignorant and unlearned men. And he used
them to herald the gospel. when he intended to defeat the
Midianites, he went to this wine press in Judah where a man by
the name of Gideon was hiding out. And the Lord spoke to Gideon
and Gideon said, I'm the least member of the least tribe of
all of Israel. Why would you choose me? And then God calls him out and
Gideon brings an army together and God says, nope, too many,
too many, too many. He gets down to 300 and 300 defeats,
hundreds of thousands of Midianites. Why does God work like that?
God didn't choose a princess or a noble woman to bear the
Lord Jesus Christ. and to care for him and raise
him up in this way. He chose a peasant woman. He chooses the most unlikely
vessels. You say, well, I can't, I'm not
a, I'm not very good witness. I don't know how to, that's, Turn with me to 1 Corinthians
chapter one. His thoughts are not our thoughts.
His ways are not our ways. As the heavens are high above
the earth, so is our God above us. Oh, don't think, I've gotta
be more qualified. Oh no. If you feel unqualified,
that's the qualification. That's the qualification. If
you ever feel qualified and capable, then you're not qualified. You
see, his strength has to be made perfect in our weakness. He's
gonna get the glory. He's not gonna share his glory
with another. And so that's the reason why Verse 26, for you
see your calling brethren how that not many wise men after
the flesh nor mighty nor many noble are called. But God has
chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise.
God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the
things that are mighty. The base things of the world, the things
which are despised have God chosen, yea, the things which are not
to bring to naught the things that are, that no flesh should
glory in his presence. That's so simple. I tell you,
that is my hope. That is my encouragement that
God would call me to stand here and try to testify of his grace
and of his glory to you and to the world as unqualified as I
am. God has made him, look at the
next verse, God has made him Of Him, the Father, are you in
Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us our wisdom? Whatever
wisdom I have, whatever understanding I have, is Christ. Righteousness? Whatever righteousness
I have before God. I have no righteousness outside
of Christ. If He should mark iniquity, who should stand? Christ
is all my righteousness before God, sanctification, holiness. If I'm going to stand in the
presence of a holy God and be made holy, Christ is going to
have to stand in my stead. He's going to have to be my holiness.
All of my redemption, what have I done? What have I done to pay
the price for my sin? If what the Lord Jesus accomplished
on Calvary's cross is not sufficient to pay the debt of my sin before
God, I have no other payment to make. Verse 31, that according as it
is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. in the Lord and he gets all the
glory. This is our mandate. What a blessing it is to be a part of the work of God. Say, well, I'm not very good witness. The work of God is not just,
we're not trying to collar people and, you know, prayer? Can you pray? Presence? Do you have any idea how important
it is that you be here? Not just for you, but for the
church. We're participating in what? In the harvest, in the planting,
in the reaping, in the sowing. Your support. Spiritual support, using your
gifts, whatever they might be. Your physical support, your financial
support, all of that is participating in the work of God. This is our
mandate. This world exists for one reason. One reason only. There's still
some lost sheep. that haven't been brought to
Christ. And when the last of God's elect is brought out of
darkness and given faith to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, this
world has no more reason to be here. It's coming to an end just
like that. It's over. The only reason exists. Let's take three.