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God's Emerging City
God wants His people to be spiritually well fed. But in too many cases, we see malnourishment in His Church. And the problem is not necessarily a lack of good Bible teaching.
When the disciples returned from the Samaritan village with the food they had purchased, they urged Jesus to have something to eat. Again, He startled them by talking about food they did not understand.
What had they failed to discern? When He sat down at the well because of His physical fatigue, He had needed food and rest to revive His body and soul (John 4:6). Then when the disciples went into town to get food supplies, He began conversing with a Samaritan woman, and something supernatural had occurred.
Have you ever taken a drink of the river of life as it flowed through you? As you shared the word of life with another, you received a spiritual impartation as much as they did. When you walked away from that experience, you were encouraged and strengthened. Just as natural food brings nourishment and strength, so obedience to God generates spiritual sustenance. Jesus had been nourished in doing His Father’s will.
Jesus often illustrated eternal truths concerning His kingdom by pointing to natural activities (e.g., a farmer sowing seed, a man seeking fine pearls, etc.). Here was another opportunity. The disciples were standing in front of Him with bags of food yet lacking understanding of what had just happened. “Did somebody else bring Him lunch?” Incidents like this help us to appreciate the twelve and their struggles to apprehend God’s kingdom. It also helps us to have more hope for ourselves.
God will bring each of us into divine appointments with others without any forewarning. If we sit down at “the well” and miss the rendezvous because we are tired, hungry, or in a hurry to get somewhere else, we will miss His nourishing food.
Many Christians have received excellent teaching and yet are spiritually malnourished. The most anointed teaching in the world is no substitute for spiritual sensitivity and obedience. To be clear, God has spiritual food for each of us at our place of employment, our neighborhood, etc. We must become alert, Spirit-filled believers who walk into the circumstances of life with our hearts open to kingdom possibilities. It is then that we will notice the food set before us right in the presence of our enemies.
While the disciples focused on their own physical fatigue and hunger, Jesus saw a field ripe for harvest. As the disciples pondered the food in their hands, Jesus pointed to the woman coming up the hill with all her friends. “Lift up your eyes! Do you see these people coming toward us? There is a field right in front of you and all you can see is sandwiches. I tell you, they are a field that is white and ready to be harvested.”
Jesus saw the present implications of His Father’s purpose for those Samaritans. Do we see the present implications of God’s kingdom in our circumstances, in our region, in our nation?
The Kingdom of God has broken into history with unfolding consequences still dawning upon us. Massive repercussions lie yet in our future. What God will do is greater than our ability to envision or even to ask for.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us.
Though we have sown much spiritual seed in anticipation of the coming harvest, a question still concerns us. Is it possible that the coming harvest will be even greater than the seed we have sown? Is to suggest such a scenario even theologically sound?
Notice Jesus’ closing thoughts at the well to His disciples.
And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors.
Does this not sound a little illegal? Are we really to reap where we did not plant and receive the blessings for which others have labored? Yet such is the description of the Promised Land. God had promised His Old Testament people that in the land, they would live in houses they did not build, reap from fields they did not plant, and drink from wells they did not dig (Deuteronomy 6:10 - 11).
Today, there is a land of promise for God’s people. It has to do with ceasing from our own labors and entering into His rest (Hebrews 3 - 4). As we abide in Him and walk receptive to His voice, we will step into divine appointments and reap where we have not sown. If our inheritance is truly connected with such activity, then there must come to the Church a great harvest not based only on how much we have sown, but also on the sowing of past generations.
God’s purpose is greater than our attempt to evangelize the world. He has a plan to climax the ages. I once heard someone say that even if an evangelist leads many people to the Lord, yet if only a small percentage of those converts continue on immediately with God, then his ministry has not been successful. But we cannot evaluate men of God by polls, statistical studies, and other secular means.
The truth is, we simply do not know all the scattered seed of previous years that will come to fruition and be reaped across the Earth. Many people have made decisions for Christ through different evangelists’ ministries and then fallen away only to return to the Lord some years later with whole-hearted commitment. Have these returning ones been calculated in the official tallies? Success is not measured by visible productivity, but by obedience to the Lord. He determines who is ultimately successful. The fact that one sowed and then many years later another reaped was all included in the sovereign purpose of God designed to keep both sower and reaper humble.
There is an inheritance awaiting us that is greater than what we can foresee. The coming harvest will amaze even those who prophesied its inevitability. And keep this in mind, the process of sowing and reaping refers to more than evangelism (i.e., ministry to the lost). It also has to do with a great harvest within Christianity. Have we not all repeatedly sown seemingly ineffectual words of life into other believers? But there will be results. God will powerfully arise revealing His Son among His people before the end of the age.[2]
Such an awesome demonstration of God’s life will not be due to the greatness of the people themselves or their methods of church growth. All attention will be on the magnificence of God, the life inherent in the sown seed, and the grace of God that produced such eternal fruit. In that day, glory will belong only to the Lord of the harvest.
In our own day as well, we must not take credit when younger believers arise into powerful ministries through our labors. Instead, our attention must be riveted upon the One who has shown himself able to use even people like us to build His glorious house.
The result of Jesus’ interaction with the woman at the well was that many of the Samaritans of that city both believed in Him and confessed that He was the Christ, the Savior of the world (John 4:39 - 42). By and large even though the Jews would have nothing to do with Samaritans because of their idolatrous belief system, yet God had determined to unveil His Son in their midst.
In our generation, He is again arising that the Earth might behold the revelation of His Son and be filled with His glory. Undoubtedly, we will see Him move among those that the Church has given up on. But stay open to His divine appointments, because He surely has surprises in store for all of us.
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