We come this Sunday to our third and final installment of Jesus at Jacob’s well. The past two Sundays, we have looked at a conversation that Jesus had there with a Samaritan woman. At the end of their conversation, this woman acknowledges Jesus to be the promised Messiah. After stating as much, she then goes back into the city (Sychar) and tells those in this town about Jesus and where they can find him. About this same time, Jesus’ disciples come back from their trip into the town of Sychar to get food. That’s where we find ourselves at this point in the narrative. Let’s look at what John has recorded for us as the conclusion of these events.
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This text, this conclusion to this particular narrative, tells us a great deal about the person of Jesus; it tells us a great deal about who he is. The disciples, we are told, urge Jesus to eat something. He responds to them by saying that he had food already. Notice the similarity between this response, and the one given to the woman in verse 10 about Jesus having “living water.” The disciples are confused. They begin to wonder if someone else has shown up and given Jesus something to eat; they hadn’t seen anybody along the path leaving and coming back to Jesus. After all, the entire purpose of them going into the city was to get food. They have to be wondering why they were sent into the city if Jesus already had food. I mean, time is of the essence, and they have just wasted time by making an unnecessary trip into Sychar. Then, Jesus responds to their questioning and confusion by describing this food that he has. He tells them that his food is to do the will of the one who sent him and to finish his work. It’s this statement that really tells us who Jesus is. His food and drink, what he needs to survive, is to do all that the Father sent him to do. Notice that I didn’t say that it was to do mostly everything that he was sent to do, but to do all that he was sent to do. Jesus knows the end to this story; the ultimate end. He knows that this will end at a tree in Calvary. It’s this ending and completed work that fuels Jesus for the duration of his earthly ministry.
Jesus follows up this statement about completing his work with this illustration about farming. Pardon my phrasing here, but Jesus is teaching the disciples how “ripe” the time is for this earthly ministry and completed work to come. Make no mistake about it; the disciples are very much in need of Jesus’ teaching at this point. After all, this ripe area (most likely meaning Samaria) was largely ignored by the disciples. They had even just passed by the woman whom Jesus had been talking to without even saying one word to her. If you’ve ever done any farming then you know that there is a finite window for getting the best crops. You don’t want to pick that tomato off the vine before its ready, but you don’t want to leave it on there too long and let it get withered. When you leave it out there too long without being picked, then you either lose it, or you end up eating tomatoes every meal so that you can say you didn’t waste anything; so you can say you didn’t waste an opportunity.
Jesus is telling the disciples that the time is right for ministry, particularly in Samaria. But it isn’t just in Samaria, it’s all over. Jesus is saying to the disciples, “You see the fields, they’re completely ripe. They’re covered in those that are so ready to be picked.” Growing up, when we would go and visit my dad’s family that lives in the Yazoo County, MS in the Mississippi Delta, I would look out the windows of our station wagon (many times from that funky rear-facing seat that we had, y’all know the one) and I would see so much white that I would think that it had snowed. My dad’s uncle used to refer to the combine tractors as Mississippi Delta snowmobiles. There was white seemingly everywhere. When the cotton crops are ready to be picked, there’s no mistaking the sight of it. Jesus is saying that there is no mistaking it; the time has come for his earthly ministry to begin its ascension to its final and greatest act.
Jesus tells his disciples that “already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying hold true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” This statement by Jesus, while on the surface a simple statement about farming, is a great summation of what Christian work and missions is. The phrase “others have labored” is something that we ought to keep in mind. So often, we think in terms of success and victory in ministry by judging what we can see on the surface, but that isn’t exactly the best idea. There is a reason why ministry is so often referred to as sowing seeds. We may never actually see the good that our witness and ministry accomplishes. I’m here to tell you, there are some retired Sunday school teachers from Meridian, MS who have almost needed a defibrillator when they heard that Tommy Robinson is now a Presbyterian minister in Houma, LA, and the Houma, LA part isn’t what surprises them. Seeds were sown and a ministry planted long before the visible ground, what was on the surface, resembled anything that looked like the life of a pastor. So as we witness to those around us, we must not be discouraged by what we don’t see. Friends, we have to continue onward, because instead of being the ones who reap, we may very well be those others who have labored and sown.
We’re told here in our text what comes about as a result of the woman’s spreading the news about Jesus in the city of Sychar. We’re told that many of those in the city came out to see Jesus and upon seeing and hearing him they came back to the woman and told her, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” And it’s this attitude and this notion that the Reformed doctrines of irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints find some scriptural backing. These two doctrines tells us that (1) ultimately God wins in the hearts of those that He has called to be His own, and (2) that once He has called us, that we will never fall away and be forsaken and forgotten. Once someone has seen Jesus, truly seen him, they lose all uncertainty. Perhaps the best and one of the most famous examples of this is the brilliant writer C.S. Lewis. Lewis, the author of the Narnia series, Screwtape Letters, and numerous other works, was at one time an atheist; he didn’t believe in God. As a matter of fact, Lewis began his study of the Christian faith and religion in an attempt to disprove God. His masterful work Mere Christianity reveals some of his thought process as he went about this task. Piece-by-piece, brick-by-brick, as Lewis began to connect all of the ideas, facts, and notions, he was left with one undeniable truth: there is a God. And he didn’t just come to the conclusion that there was just any God, but the God of the Bible, the Christian God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Folks, throughout the entirety of this account of Jesus at Jacobs well, we have seen one ultimate truth at the foundation of everything else: Jesus Christ is the Messiah. Jesus Christ is the one who was sent by the Father, to pay the price for our sins. Yes, it’s true that at this point in time that the only one who really understands the magnitude of this fact is Jesus himself, but that’s not the case for us today. Somehow, we have become immune to the fact that the Messiah came. We think of it as being just part-of-it, but it’s so much more. It’s not just a part-of-it, it’s the whole thing. All that we are and all that we have are because of this saving work carried out my Christ during his earthly ministry. Let us never lose sight of this fact and seek daily to proclaim God’s word and live lives that point others to the cross. Glory be to God; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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