Finish the Work

Sunday, June 17, 2012, 8:30 a.m. – The Lord woke me with this song this morning, “The Regions Beyond.” Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening. Yesterday I read in John 4 the story of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%204&version=NIV1984

The scriptures say Jesus “had to go through Samaria.” The Jews often avoided going through Samaria. I am not sure why Jesus had to go through that town other than he had a divine appointment there with a woman. The Samaritans were a despised people because they were a mixed race. Jews did not associate with Samaritans. So, for Jesus to go into Samaria, and for him to talk with a Samaritan, and with a woman, was a break with Jewish tradition and custom.

When the Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water, Jesus asked her for a drink. The woman was taken aback by this, because she knew Jews did not associate with Samaritans. Jesus responded to her by saying, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” The woman thought he was talking about literal water, so she inquired of him as to how he was going to give her this water if he did not bring something with which to draw water from the well. Jesus understood the woman’s confusion. It was not unlike Nicodemus’ confusion when Jesus told him that he must be “born again.” He wondered how he, a grown man, could reenter his mother’s womb. Yet, Jesus often used the physical to illustrate the spiritual, because we identify with the physical, because we can see it and touch it.

The Gift of God

Going back to what Jesus said to her, he began to let her know that he was the Messiah. If only she knew the “gift of God” and who was asking her for a drink, she would be asking him for this living water. The “gift of God” is not defined clearly in this passage. Certainly Jesus is the gift of God to mankind, as well as is God’s grace to us, and so is the Holy Spirit. The answer to the “who” is that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah-God. If only she knew who she was talking to and what God had for her, she would be asking for it. Perhaps the “gift of God,” then, is to merely be understood, in this context, as the “living water” Jesus desired to give her, which was salvation, eternal life with God, and the Holy Spirit, who would come, and has now come into the lives and hearts of believers in Jesus after Jesus died, rose and ascended to heaven. The Holy Spirit and eternal life (abundant life; our salvation) would become a spring of water within her welling up to eternal life, which is now the experience of all true followers of Jesus Christ.

Then, the woman asked for this water so she would never be thirsty again. Yet, for her to receive it, something had to happen first. She had to acknowledge her sin and to turn from it (repent of sin). So, Jesus, knowing this, told the woman to go call her husband and to come back. The woman exclaimed that she had no husband. Then, Jesus took that opportunity, which he had provided, and gently confronted the woman with her sin. The woman previously had five husbands, and the man she was now with was not her husband. And, then he affirmed that what she said about not having a husband was true.

In spirit and in truth

The woman could see that Jesus was, at least, a prophet, because how else would he know these things about her. But then she moved right into another question, in the form of a comment: “Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” She was still thinking this all through. If she believed Jesus, and she received this living water, practically what would that mean? The Jews worshiped a different place than her people did. What changes or moves would she have to make in order to follow the God of the Jews? At least, it appears to me that this may have been what prompted her question to Jesus. Yet, Jesus put her concerns to rest when he answered her in a way, most likely, that came as a surprise to her. He said:

~ “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.” ~

I love this passage! There is such freedom in Jesus’ words. Jesus was telling her, basically, that things were changing, and that he was part of that change. The Jews had been worshiping God in a physical temple which was the house of the Lord, and perhaps the Samaritans worshiped their god in a physical building, too. That was all changing, and Jesus was the change-agent through which these changes were taking place. We, as followers of Christ, no longer have to go to a specific location or to a particular building or even on a specific day in the week. That all changed when Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins and the veil that stood between us and the Holy of Holies (God’s holy presence) was torn in two. Jesus’ death opened the way to where daily, no matter where we are, we can enter into God’s holy presence. The church building is not the church, and it is not God’s house. The temple of God is now in our hearts, so we can worship our Lord 24/7 in spirit (within us) and in truth (in confession and repentance of sin and in walking in obedience to Christ).

The Messiah

The woman was still thinking about what Jesus said to her, and she was working that through her mind and heart, because her next statement is very telling, I believe. She said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” I think she was fishing to see if Jesus was the Messiah. And, he responded to her plainly, “I who speak to you am he.” She suspected he might be the Messiah, it appears, and her statement, I think, really was more of a question. And, so he told her what she wanted to know. He was indeed the promised Messiah who was coming and had now come.

The disciples returned and interrupted this dialogue between Jesus and this woman. They were surprised to find Jesus talking with a Samaritan woman. Then the woman left, leaving her water jar behind her. She went back to her people and said: “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

John said, “They came out of the town and made their way toward him… 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, and he stayed 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; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.’” Awesome!

John’s gospel is the only one that records this story, I believe. John did not spell out for us whether or not the woman left her life of sin or whether she was among those who believed in Jesus Christ. The passage seems to allude to that conclusion, though. Yet, what we do know is that Jesus had a divine appointment with a woman at a well in a town Jews did not normally frequent and among a people Jews did not normally associate. So, Jesus was out of his comfort zone, as a Jew, but not as God in ministering to this woman. And, because of Jesus’ testimony to this woman in presenting to her the gospel message, many Samaritans came to believe in Jesus Christ.

Following this encounter with the woman and the time spent in Samaria in leading people to faith in Jesus Christ, Jesus went to Galilee. I love what this says next: “(Now Jesus himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.) When he arrived in Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him.” Awesome! While there, Jesus healed the son of a royal official. The son was sick in Capernaum. At merely the words of Jesus the boy was healed, and at the same exact hour in which Jesus had said, “Your son will live,” too. Amen!

Do the Will of God

Going back to the story of the woman at the well, there was an interlude here that I left out and that I saved for last. The disciples had now returned to Jesus, the woman left to go tell her people the things Jesus had said to her, and now the disciples were urging Jesus to eat something, probably because he had not eaten for a while and they were concerned about him. Yet, Jesus responded to them by saying, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” The disciples, just like Nicodemus, and just like the Samaritan woman, translated Jesus’ words into the physical realm, and they asked each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” I love Jesus’ reply:

~ “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the 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 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.” ~

Jesus was speaking of spiritual food (sustenance; nourishment; nutrition), which was of greater importance and value than physical food. He was more concerned with the salvation of human lives than he was with his physical needs. That does not mean he neglected his physical needs, but that he had the right order of priority between the physical and the spiritual. What was most important to him was doing the will of God the Father, who had sent him to the earth to do the work of God in the hearts of human lives. Though farmers would plant seed and tend to what they planted, they had to wait for the harvest. Jesus said we don’t have to wait for a spiritual harvest. All we have to do is to look all around us and to see that the spiritual fields of this world are ripe for harvest, if we know where to look.

Jesus realized that a prophet had no honor among his own people. We have no record showing Nicodemus having a transformed heart and life due to Jesus’ words, or that he went out sharing the gospel, as did the Samaritan woman. He was a Pharisee. The rich young ruler went away sad because he had so much wealth. The people of Jerusalem were much harder for Jesus to reach with the gospel, yet the Samaritans and the people of Galilee welcomed Jesus and his words. Sometimes we can spend so much time and effort working in hard soil that will never produce fruit, while there is so much soil that is just ripe for bearing fruit someplace else. I believe that was the lesson Jesus was trying to teach his disciples. He knew they were surprised at him talking with the Samaritan woman. Jesus was trying to get them to see beyond their own traditions and/or prejudices, perhaps, and to realize that a whole field was out there just waiting for them if they would be willing to go.

Sometimes we go places where they have never heard the gospel. Other times God may send us to places where the seed has already been planted and nurtured and all we have to do is to reap the harvest of spiritual fruit among the people. Yet, the point is that we must go. If Jesus had walked around Samaria, or if he had followed tradition and custom and had avoided speaking with the woman at the well, would that woman have heard the gospel? And, would the people in her village have come to believe in Jesus Christ? We have to be willing to step away from tradition, out of our comfort zone, and to go to the regions beyond. We have to take the gospel wherever Jesus Christ sends us. If he says to leave a place because they will not listen, then we have to leave, too. In all things, we must be about doing the will of God and completing the work he sent each of us to do in being Christ’s witnesses, and in making disciples of all nations.

The Regions Beyond / Albert B. Simpson / Margaret M. Simpson

To the regions beyond I must go, I must go,

Where the story has never been told;

To the millions that never have heard of His love,

I must tell the sweet story of old.

To the hardest of places He calls me to go,

Not thinking of comfort or ease;

The world may pronounce me a dreamer, a fool -

Enough if the Master I please.

Oh, you that are spending your leisure and powers

In those pleasures so foolish and fond;

Awake from your selfishness, folly and sin,

And go to the regions beyond.

There are other “lost sheep” that the Master must bring,

And to them must the message be told;

He sends me to gather them out of all lands,

And welcome them back to His fold.

To the regions beyond I must go, I must go,

Till the world, all the world,

His salvation shall know.