John 4:27-42 Reap!

Video Teaching
Verse-by-Verse Commentary
Full Transcript

Video Teaching

Verse-by-Verse Commentary

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

The disciples return to find Jesus speaking with a Samaritan woman, which was socially unacceptable and potentially scandalous, but there’s no interrogation. Instead, they trust that Jesus is up to something, and they can learn.
1. We have to trust people that we hope to learn from. A student learning algebra might be baffled at the sudden appearance of letters in a math equation, but if they accuse the teacher of making a mistake, they’ll miss an opportunity to learn.
2. God knows everything and is the ultimate teacher, but how often do we really trust him when our life differs from what we expect? If we accuse Him, we will miss what he’s doing.

28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.

Notice that she’s excited that he knew what she did, even though the knowledge he had was about how she had fallen short and failed to find what she wanted. This potential messiah knew what she did, but still wanted to talk to her. He was not only powerful, but he was merciful.
It’s likely the town knew her history well. There’s no way she could have kept her messy marriages secret. Drawing attention to herself in this way was a risk, but she’s willing to take it because of what Jesus means to her.
“The woman is almost turned into an Apostle. So forcible are His words, that she leaves her waterpot to go to the city, and tell her townsmen of them. The woman then left her waterpot, i. e. gave up low bodily cares, for the sake of benefitting others. Let us do the same. Let us leave off caring for things of the body, and impart to others of our own.” -Origen

31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”

34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.

We’ve seen this from Jesus earlier in this chapter. For the woman who was new to God, he took the example of water, something physical that she knew, to talk about what she was really thirsty for: a relationship with God. Now, he talks to the disciples in a similar way about food.
1. Water was eternal life, but food is doing the will of God and joining in that mission in the day to day.
2. Many people think that metaphorical water is enough for their journey with God. They KNOW that Jesus died for them, but then they don’t apply that knowledge to their daily life. Life seems meaningless, trapped in routines, waiting for Jesus to come. God invites us to daily mission and purpose to fill our hunger for meaning in this world.
“What wonder that the woman did not understand about the water? Lo, the disciples do not understand about the food!” -Augustine

35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”

To a person who has done little farming, harvest might seem like the payoff at the end. This is the chance to finally get the fruits of your labor! But remember that the harvest season is one of the most labor-intensive parts of farming. Farmers spend a lot of time rushing against the clock, working in the fields during harvest.
‘One sows and another reaps’
1. “This was a common proverb, by which he showed that many men frequently receive the fruit of the labor of others, though there was this difference, that he who has labored is displeased at seeing the fruit carried away by another, whereas the Apostles have the Prophets for the companions of their joy.” -John Calvin
This truth is not only true individually, but corporately. Think about all the people at your local church that planted seeds so that you could harvest! Decades of people worked hard so you can stand where you are.

39 Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. 41 And because of his words many more became believers.

42 They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”

The least likely people in the least likely place provide the first real example of people being excited and hungry for what Jesus is doing.
When we feel discouraged, we sometimes assume that Christ has done his best work in the past and there is nothing left to look forward to. If Jesus can cause such a stir in Samaria through a woman with little social capital, what can he do in our lives?

Full Transcript

I am delighted to have the opportunity to preach on these particular verses to all of you today. I think it’s so hopeful. It is something that is so needed, I think, for so many. One thing I run across with theologically orthodox Christians is this: there’s just this heaviness about them; this world weariness, this sense that there’s nothing good to look forward to in this world. The church has lost so much of its cultural power. Christianity is no longer the force that it once was on the political stage, the cultural stage, and consequently, what good is there? It’s just this slow dying of an empire that’s left to watch this almost hopeless situation that no one can do anything about. That is grim. That is sad. There’s not much joy in that.

To some extent, I don’t want to pretend that some of those fears aren’t grounded in something. I think it’s well worth noting: yes, Christianity is no longer the cultural force that it once was in the United States. No longer is Christian thought something that you can just count on as normative in any group of people. No longer can you count on the fact that kids are just going to naturally grow up and become Christian. That’s just what they do.

I think, yes, churches in a lot of cases are shrinking, but I don’t think the correct response to all of this, the biblical response, is to just give up hope and say, “Well, there’s nothing to do. It just is what it is, and we can all be sad forever.” God has a response to the things going on in the world. It’s not hopelessness. Let’s dig in. We’ll get to it as we go.

Verse 27, and by the way, we’re opening halfway through a story. Last week we saw Jesus at the well of Jacob. He met this woman, this Samaritan—a group that is historically enemies of the Jewish people. Men didn’t speak to women in public without a husband or a brother being present. It’s to show that everything’s legitimate, no funny business. She’s also someone that came to the well at noon. She came at the hottest portion of the day. Normally, the women of the household would go get water in the morning. Yet this woman has gone at the least convenient time, when no one’s going to be there. I suggested that we can kind of see why she might have done that if we look at her life. She’s been married to five men; she’s living with a sixth. This is someone that today would likely be someone who gets gossiped about, and if it’s true today, it’s infinitely more true in first-century Israel. That would have been a big deal. That would have been huge, juicy gossip. She probably would have been ostracized. That would be very, very normal for almost any first-century Middle Eastern community. She would be an outcast. There’s this conversation happening between Jesus and this person who’s just not the kind of person that you’re supposed to talk to.

Jesus talks to her. He notices this thirst she has for something more in life, that she’s been looking for a point, and she has not found it in the places that she’s been seeking it. He introduces himself to her as Messiah, and that’s where we stopped. We didn’t see her reaction. I think I kind of implied it was positive, so apologies for giving a spoiler. But you can see here in verse 27, now we get to see her response.

First, we see the disciples coming back. They went to go get food; now they’re coming back. Verse 27: just then, his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Notice that the disciples find him having this bizarre, kind of sketchy conversation with someone. But what’s their response? Trust. They trust Jesus even though he’s doing something that normally it would be reasonable to interrogate someone about—why are you doing that? What on earth are you doing? They don’t stop and interrogate him. They trust that their teacher knows something that they don’t, and maybe if they just wait, they will learn. You have to be able to trust teachers if you really want to learn from them. There’s so much that we don’t understand. That’s the whole thing about teachers. They’re trying to teach us what we don’t know. If every time they do something that is unexpected, we start interrogating them, we’re never going to get anywhere.

Can you imagine if a middle schooler walks into math class for the first day in a new school year, and a teacher goes to the board, and lo and behold, they start writing letters next to the numbers? The student stands up outraged and says, “What are you doing? Everyone knows letters are for English and numbers are for math. I don’t trust you anymore. You need to explain yourself. I’m going to bring in the principal, and we’re going to have a talk about this because I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.” That student would never learn anything. They don’t understand algebra yet, so they have to sit and trust the teacher, even when the teacher does things they certainly don’t expect.

The same is true for us. We have to trust teachers. When we find a teacher that we really want to learn from, we have to be willing to trust them, even when they surprise us sometimes. If that’s true about earthly teachers, how much more true is that about God? God, who knows everything, seeks to teach us things over the course of our lives. If we don’t trust him, we’re not going to learn what he’s trying to teach us.

Just think about it. How many times in your life have you wound up in a place that you did not expect to be in? How many times have you not gotten what you expected to get or just been frustrated at where you ended up? How often have you been tempted to say, “God, what are you doing? Come on! This isn’t the way this was supposed to go?” We know that we don’t know everything and that God does, but it is so tempting to just assume that he ought to be doing the kind of things we expect, and when he doesn’t, to try to interrogate him about what on earth is going on.

If we want to learn, we have to trust God. We have to accept that sometimes he’s going to do the unexpected. If we’re wise, we’ll keep our mouths shut and we’ll learn from it. That’s what the disciples do. They come back, they see this teacher of theirs doing something unexpected, but they trust him enough that rather than interrogating, they wait and expect that they can learn something.

Verse 28: “Then leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?’” This is her big pitch to them: come, see the man who told me everything I ever did.

On its face, that seems primarily excited about Jesus’s ability to know things he shouldn’t be able to know. That’s certainly a big part of it. Jesus knew things about her that he had no way of knowing. That is pretty impressive. If we didn’t know the context, that would be enough. We would get the gist of it. But there is more to it, because we know the kinds of things Jesus told her. He didn’t just point out random details about her life. He didn’t even point out good things or neutral things. He pointed out ways in which she had done things that were not according to God’s law. He pointed out the very thing that probably ostracized her in the eyes of others in the city—the fact that she had five husbands and was living with a sixth man, even though she was not married. That’s what Jesus talked to her about. This wasn’t just any kind of knowledge that he had about her. It was knowledge of the ways in which she had fallen short. Certainly he convicted her. These were not the sorts of things she ought to be doing. This was a thirst for something more in life.

At the same time, what’s the most exciting thing for her about it? This guy knew the things that she had done wrong, and he still wanted to talk to her. What makes him the Messiah is not just his knowledge, but the fact that he still wants a relationship despite knowing the ways in which she had fallen short. He still wants the best for her. He still sees her as valuable and important. That’s exciting. Not just the knowledge of God, but the mercy of God.

Think about that. Think about the things that you have done wrong—the worst things imaginable. Think about the things that you may not have ever spoken to a single soul about, the things you don’t like to think about because you’re ashamed. God knows. God knows those things like you did them right in front of his eyes, because you pretty much did. But here’s the thing: God still loves you. He still wants what’s best for you. He is still constantly reaching out to us in spite of whatever we have done. The delight of God, knowing the things that we have done, is not just that he’s all-knowing, but that he’s so merciful that in spite of the ways in which we fall short, he continues not to give up on us. He continues to reach out to us. He continues to seek ways to help us find what is good.

That’s why this is so exciting to this woman: God’s knowledge and God’s mercy. She goes around and tells everyone in town. This woman, who would be the subject of gossip, does not cease telling anyone she meets about the wonders of this person she met at the well.

She puts herself on the line. There’s no way you secretly marry five different men. That’s not a secret. Everyone would know. Those are the kinds of things that would make her the subject of gossip. But she’s not ashamed of where she’s at in life if that’s going to help people engage with Jesus. Jesus was the one who talked to her, even though she was not the kind of person that most people would bother talking to. He reached out to her when no one else would. Now there is nothing she wouldn’t do for him.

We see all that going on, and then we return to the disciples. Here they are: “Meanwhile, the disciples urged him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’” Remember, they went into town to get something to eat. That was the whole point. They went out, got some food for Jesus, and brought it back. He’s not eating. What’s going on? Maybe he’s reflecting on what happened. “Jesus, why don’t you eat something?”

Jesus responds, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” It’s the same thing he did earlier. Jesus used what the woman knew to talk about what she didn’t fully understand. He talked about physical thirst to begin addressing the spiritual thirst he knew she had. Now he’s doing the same thing with the disciples. He starts with physical hunger and moves to spiritual hunger. They don’t pick up on it immediately. They wonder if someone brought him food. Did someone sneak Jesus a burger? What’s going on?

Jesus makes it clear. Verse 34: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” Spiritual thirst is what we dealt with in the first half—the desire to understand who you are in the world, to understand the point of life. That’s good. The woman wanted more, and she encountered the Messiah. That’s good. But that alone is not enough. Just knowing who Jesus is, that you’re saved, that someday you might go to heaven, that’s good, but it doesn’t solve the problem of the day in and day out. Tomorrow morning is just another day, and you still have to get through it. In the long run, if the big picture is all you have, it can make the day-to-day feel dull. You’re just killing time—just killing time until everything gets to the good part.

You need something more than just a basic understanding of the fact that there’s a meaning to life. You need to understand how day in, day out makes a difference, how every minute of your day is something worth looking forward to. That’s what Jesus is pointing to. He has pointed to spiritual hunger. You have the thirst to know why the world is meaningful and a hunger to live out that meaning every second of the day. Jesus says, here’s the thing. God has work set out for you. When you wake up in the morning, God has work that he wants you to do. How exciting is that? How often do you wake up in the morning and think to yourself, man, I am going to go do the will of God today? I don’t know. I know very often I start out with a list of stuff. The list of stuff you have to do, the meetings you have to get through, the paperwork that needs done, the chores you got to get through. That’s dull. Deadly dull. That’s not to say things like that don’t need done, but unless you put it in some kind of meaningful context, it’s just blah. It’s so pointless.

But here’s the thing: every day we wake up, Jesus says God has put this hunger in us to do meaningful work every day. He’s set work before us for Him. My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Verse 35, don’t you have a saying, it’s still four months until harvest? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields. They are ripe for a harvest. So he points to this piece of folk wisdom. They say, “Oh, it’s still four months till harvest.” A phrase that kind of meant, “Hey, don’t worry too much about it. Don’t worry too much. Things take a long time. Don’t get bent out of shape about it. No reason getting excitable. There’s always tomorrow.” Jesus says, “Here is the thing: the fields are ready for a harvest right now. Open your eyes and look.” I think this is exciting. Remember, in the beginning, I talked a little about how it’s not uncommon to find theologically orthodox Christians that just feel bummed, that feel cynical, that feel tired because they feel like the world is changing in a way that’s frustrating, and they don’t know what to do about it. What can they do except watch this once Christian Empire slowly crumble? Here’s what God says. God says, ‘Hey, you look out there and you don’t see anything. I’m telling you the fields are ripe for harvest. There is so much in this world to be doing right now.’ The answer is not oh just give up and feel sad. The answer is get out there and recognize the thirst that people have for the good news that you carry. Recognize all of the ways that you can bring glory to God in this world around you. Think about all the people that are wondering what the point is. Think about all the people that are wrestling with who they are, all the people that are frustrated and depressed and anxious. Think about all the people that commit suicide in a given week. Think about all the people, there is so much frustration and confusion in the world. And we have this message of joy. The field is ripe for harvest.

You know, now that I’ve lived in Kenton here for coming up on four months. I know a little something more about harvest than I used to. See, as a non-farmer, I grew up next to some cornfields but I didn’t farm anything. I saw the combines go by every so often, but I didn’t know a lot about it. But now I have learned. See, I even know cool insider lingo from watching all of you. I know, for example, that saying “Oh they are harvesting” No, rookie move. What is it? Let’s see if I can get it. Shelling corn? And is it taking down beans? Am I getting that? What is it? Combining, there’s another one. See, I’m still learning. I’m going to get the insider lingo sooner or later. But nonetheless, I think previously, there would have been this sense in my mind that maybe a temptation to suggest: harvest, that’s the easy part. That’s the good part. You just go out and get the stuff. All of the hard work has been done. You just go out and get the good stuff. But for the past few weeks I’ve seen all of you harvesting, and it is not easy work! The farmers among us well know, as some of you have told me, stories of how long you’ve been in your fields. Harvesting is hard work! It takes extra work, if anything. But here’s the thing: it’s not that it’s grim work to be in harvest season. There is extra work, but there is also this tangible reward at the end.

That’s what God sees. God is not inviting us to just take it easy and pluck the fruits of our labor simply and gracefully because we don’t even have to try because it’s harvest season. If it’s harvests, there is still work to be done. But God knows that there is this obvious tangible benefit waiting at the end of it. Our work is not something that we will never see any fruit from. It’s right there! All we have to do is put in the work.

We continue on in verse 36, ‘Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.’ Thus the saying one sows and another reaps is true.I have sent you to reap for what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” So here again, Jesus uses a piece of folk wisdom and kind of flips it upside down. “You’ve all heard this saying that one sows and another reaps.” In other words, one person puts in the work at the beginning of the process. But they’re not always the person that gets to see the benefit because someone else comes along and ends up benefiting near the end of the process. Jesus is saying, ‘Yeah, that’s true, but it’s a good thing.’

You’ll see here in your bulletin. I think John Calvin nailed this one. One of the reformers, he writes, “One sows and another reaps.’ This was something commonly said to point out how some people benefit from the hard work of others. But here we see something a little different. Normally, the person who labors would be frustrated that someone else is enjoying the fruit of their labor. But the prophets and the apostles that went before us are actually joyful that we’re reaping what they sowed.” In other words, all this work that has to be done, yes there was work that was done before it. But there have been people that came before us for generations and generations that sowed seeds for the glory of God.

All Saints Day is still a few weeks off, so I won’t pursue this to its fullest. But just think about all the people that were right here in this church that lived their entire lives to bring about the glory of God. And think about the people before them who set up a church here. And think about the people before them who moved to this area. And think about the people before them back in Europe, who moved to America to pursue a vision of religious liberty. And think about the people before them who had to bring the Christian witness to Europe. There have been thousands of years of people sowing seeds to bring about the glory of God. And today, we stand to reap finally what has been planted all these years ago. People have put in generations of work. We do not stand alone with our work. Others have put in the hard work, but we are the ones who will see the fruition of these seeds that were planted so many years ago.

Now here at the end, we see the results of this woman, her evangelism. Verse 39: Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony. He told me everything I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them. He stayed for two days, and because of his words, many more became believers. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said. We have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.” Here at the end, this woman witnesses to all of her friends; they all come to Jesus.

We see this incredible thing, this region that no Jew would go to, Samaria. This region that people actively avoided because they were trouble. What happens there? It’s so rare to see people this excited about Jesus, this interested to sit and learn from him. But here, with what seemed to be the least likely people and in what seemed to be the least likely place, these people say, Jesus, please stay with us. Please teach us more. The least likely people are the ones that most want to hear more from Jesus. And why? Not just because of her witness, but because they are eager to see Jesus’s work in their lives. They want to hear from him personally.

I think that’s another piece of that good news with all of the sense that oh, the world is changing and there’s just no hope anymore. So much of that assumes that the incredible things that we’ve seen God do in our lives are done. He won’t do those for other people. Not only are they not thirsty or hungry spiritually, but God’s done. He did stuff for us and now he’s done. That’s not the case. God is not finished. God is waiting to work in the lives of so many other people. God has not called us to just be a sad waning cultural force. God never said following him was going to be easy. God is not done! God is eager to do new work, to do incredible things in the lives of people that are thirsty and hungry, to do things in the lives of people that you wouldn’t expect. The field is ready for harvest! Open your eyes. All we have to do is go out, trust God, and reap. Amen.