Grace Baptist Church, Nokomis, IL.

Text:

I heard an illustration not long ago about a preacher who didn’t know what to preach the next Sunday. All week long, he thought about it and prayed about it, but couldn’t discern what the Lord would have Him preach on. When it was time for the sermon on Sunday morning, he stood up, turned to the congregation, and said, “I did not receive a word from the Lord this week, so there will be no sermon this morning.” Then he sat back down.

What a tragedy! We have God’s very Word! My words matter far less than His Word! It would have been far better to stand up and read for 20 to 30 minutes from the Bible itself! My words are not God’s words to you. The Bible is God’s Word to you. I simply have the privilege of teaching it and encouraging you through it.

I found myself in a similar situation this past week. All week, I prayed for God to direct me to the passage to preach from. I never doubted that God would lay a passage on my heart, but sometimes I wish He’d do it a little sooner. I came into my office yesterday morning, still not knowing what I would preach on. I came into the sanctuary to pray as I often do. Sometimes I pray at the altar, sometimes I pray in the back pew. As I walked to the back pew, I felt like God was leading me to keep going. I walked out the back door of the sanctuary, then out to the back of the church building. I felt like God was telling me to keep going. So I started walking through the grass, toward the trees, but I felt like God was leading me to wander left a bit, until I was at the edge of our property, staring at a field of mud, ready to be planted. And I thought, “Really, Lord? Isn’t that nice, clean, grassy spot over there a great place to pray?” But I felt like the Lord was leading me to keep going. I don’t know if it’s even legal to walk through someone’s muddy land, but I felt like that’s where God wanted me to pray. So I took a step in and asked God if that was far enough, and I felt like He was telling me to keep going. So I did. I walked through the mud to the back of the muddy field, and I felt like God told me to turn around, and I did, and I instantly knew what God wanted me to preach this morning.

Read John 4:31-38

When I turned around and saw the field, I saw a lot of mud. I saw a lot of work that needed to be done. I saw a lot of potential that was just ready for someone to fertilize, and plant, and then reap. But I also saw a lot of potential for us as well. I’ve said before that it would be nice to one day have to buy that land. Once we effectively use all the space available to us now, as we continue to grow, there are many options that we would have to consider, such as church planting, or multiple services, but I think one option is certainly expanding the land available to us to use. But simply dreaming about such things won’t make them happen. We’ve got to trust God, and lift up our eyes, and see things the way God sees them. God has a harvest waiting for us, but we need to be willing to get our feet dirty.

There are people all over our community who are desperate. Whose marriages are falling apart. Who are constantly worried about finances. Who feel all alone, like no one is there for them. They’re ready to hear the gospel! They’re ready to hear that there’s more to this life, and that there’s a life to come if they trust in Jesus that makes all of the struggles of this life seem so insignificant! But we’ve got to tell them.

Sometimes, I think we think that the fields being ready for harvest means that we’ll just sit back in our pews and see countless people coming to Christ. Kind of a “if you build it, they will come” mentality. But we have work to do! We have to work with Christ to see the harvest.
Before this conversation with His disciples, Jesus had the conversation with the Samaritan woman at the well. And after Jesus told His disciples about the fields being ready for Harvest, many Samaritans believed in Christ because of the woman’s testimony. It’s not that we don’t have to continue to plant. It’s not that we don’t contribute to the work being done (v. 38). Often the bulk of the work has already been done for us! (v. 37) Yet we still need to enter into the labor as well. It’s that the work we do will grow far beyond anything we could accomplish on our own, and that we get to see God moving among us and drawing people to Himself and lives changed by the power of Christ. It’s like what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 3:6-7. “I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.”

But we’ve got to believe it. If we don’t believe it, we won’t act on it, and it won’t happen. The work that God wants us to do is essential to the harvest and to ourselves (v. 34). We do God’s will because we need to be sustained by doing God’s will. It’s more important than food. And that’s pretty important! I think we often don’t realize the importance of God’s will because we have to have faith and hope and leave the results up to God. We like the results to be up to us. It takes a lot of faith to leave it to God. But it’s no different with planting (v. 35). When farmers plant, they’re sure they’ll have a harvest in four months. When we look out at the work done and the gospel seeds sown, we ought to trust that God will bring us a harvest as well.

When you lift up your eyes, what do you see? Do you see all the work that you have to do? Do you see all the ways you’ve failed over the years? Or do you see hope? Do you see what can be and will be if you trust in God?

Maybe you’re in the place I was in yesterday morning. You know God wants you to walk through the mud, but it looks too muddy. God will not provide the harvest unless we take a step of faith. Unless someone puts in the work of sowing and reaping in that field, there will be no harvest.

But Christ gives us hope. Because Christ went to the cross for us, He turns our muddy field into a harvest. He transforms our brokenness into wholeness. Into gladness. But again, we’ve got to believe it. Simply coming to church doesn’t change us. We need to place our faith in Christ every day as we walk with him, and be willing to step into the mud, to be used wherever God would use us.