In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of looking beyond our own worldly concerns and focusing on the eternal value of spreading the gospel. He uses the analogy of rice farmers eagerly gathering their harvest to illustrate the urgency of sharing the message of salvation. The preacher shares a personal experience of being consumed by the realization of the lost souls in the world, which caused him to lose his physical appetite. He also shares a testimony of missionaries who saw great success in their ministry with just a simple gospel tract. The sermon concludes with the reminder to evaluate all things in the light of eternity and to prioritize doing the will of God.

Verses 31 to 38. Meanwhile his disciples urged him, Rabbi, eat something. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you know nothing about. Then his disciples said to each other, Could someone have brought him food? My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me, and to finish his work. Do not say four months more than the harvest. Do not say four months more than 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 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. Amen. God the Father promises one day that every tribe, every nation, there will be worshipers of him. That one day every knee will bow and tongue confess, as all the nations are given to our Lord and Savior. So one day we shall celebrate that day. We've been privileged to have Dr. K.P. Yohanan this weekend. Those of us who were here last night, I think we're very blessed by his many stories and simple, hard messages urging us to love the Lord. That's what it comes down to. He's the founder and director of Gospel for Asia Missions Organization. And we invite him up. Excited to have him minister the Word to us again today. Good morning. No translation. I really, really enjoyed the worship. It's not just the words, but the intensity of the face and the eyes and all that goes with it. And no wonder why everyone here is 18 years old. One of my great joys is any opportunity I get to spend time with young people. Not that I'm very old, old. But it was at the age of 16, I happened to hear George Woolworth speak on committing one's life to Christ absolutely, completely, totally without any question or observation. And I was one of those young people that evening surrendered my life to the Lord. That was 1966. And I'm still on the journey. And I think about the potential is enormous. And I pray that the Lord will draw you close to him. And that he will fulfill his plan, his dreams. The scripture portion we read this morning is from John's Gospel chapter 4. Jesus didn't have seminary or Bible college or a formal setting to teach his disciples. As a matter of fact, if you and I were to recruit people to do the ministry, if we were in Christ's place, I imagine we would go to Westminster Seminary or Fuller or Trinity or Columbia or Oxford or Yale to find the best brain, the best theologian, the smartest to be in his company. But Christ didn't do that. He did not go to Damaniel's Theological Seminary to recruit anyone. He went to the shores and found hardworking, normal, average people, callous on their hands and rough in their language but committed to do whatever Christ would tell them to do. And he accomplished the task. And he refused to set up formal classes to teach. We have 45 Bible schools and one major seminary that offers postgraduate degrees. I am not against seminaries and higher education. I myself went to seminary. But Jesus taught his disciples by simply saying, Come, learn of me. Take my yoke upon you. Simply says, walk away from your own life that you love so much. Bend your stiff neck. Be broken. And thus you will learn of me. Not theory, not doctrines, but the way I am. You imitate me and you be like me. So he used the daily events of their lives to teach them things of eternal value for that is only the real thing there is. Life on earth is a classroom in which we are learning what it means to be prepared for eternity. So we read in 1 John this very interesting statement about being a Christian or following the Lord. In 1 John 2 verse 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. In the living Bible it is very nicely translated or paraphrased. Anyone who says he is a Christian should live as Christ did. You know, a lot of times we read the Bible. We try to find some hidden deep profound Greek Hebrew. You know we miss it all. How simple it can be. If you claim to be Christ, you must live as Christ did. You can't get any more Greek than that. But what does that mean? When Jesus came, he had one purpose on his mind. To fulfill the father's will. So he said, son never does anything of himself. All what the father wants. And what he wants? Go to the cross, lay down his life for the redemption of the mankind. That is for you and for me. Now Jesus must prepare his group of people. And finally he will say, as the father sent me, so I am sending you. Oh, don't forget, I will always be with you. But during this course of teaching them. Establish a foundation for their life. And for us. Here is an incident. He is saying, learn of me. The disciples went off to buy food. I imagine it was rice and seaweed and kimchi. I love Korean food. I don't know about you. That is one reason I like to be a missionary in Korea, I think. So they came back while Jesus was waiting at the well. Obviously exhausted, physically tired. Yeah, I mean of course, it was God's appointment for that woman to be saved. Okay, fine. But the basic reality is that he was tired. He was sitting there. He said, you fellows go and get something to eat. So they said, master, teacher, rabbi, guru, please eat. And Jesus said, I have food to eat that you don't know about. You don't need explanation here. But the disciples really got confused. You would do. He said, you mean when we were gone, somebody brought him something to eat? He said, no. My food is to do the will of him that sent me and finish it. Uh-oh. He didn't eat. He said he ate. Now he says he ate God's will. This is how he teaches them. Things of eternal value. He says, I tell you what. What happened is this. When you went off to buy food, as you have seen me, I was talking as a woman. Her face became a window for me to look through and see multitudes upon multitudes just like her. Lost, undone, unforgiven all the way to hell. And that realization consumed, eliminated, destroyed my very physical appetite. I am no more hungry. It is like when your father dies, your mother dies, your husband dies, your wife dies, your child dies, your brother dies. You simply don't have appetite. You lose it. The pain, the anguish is too much to care about food. And he said, but he will not understand it. Unless you lift up your eyes. Unless you look away from your own little world of concerns. Your clothes, your house, your degrees, your fashions, your dreams, your ambitions, your agendas and whatever you are thinking about. Unless you walk away from that world and see what I see. You will not understand. And you will keep on saying, four months later, six months later, when I finish my studies, when I have established myself, when I get married, or when I do this. Someday, somehow, okay, late, no. If you see what I see, you will see harvest is now. I come from a family where my people are rice farmers. It's a farm where all my people in the village. And the harvest time comes, my people are like the chicken with the head cut off. American. That means you don't sit around trying to figure out what to do. Day and night they are desperate to gather in the harvest. Why? Few weeks wait, everything is destroyed. Jesus is not talking about rice and corn and maize. No, he is talking about people harvest. The harvest is now. Pray to the Lord of the harvest that he may send laborers. I mean you people live in this country as I live here. Although not all my year I don't live here. A few months of the year I am in America. In Dallas, where we are, our headquarters, there are 13 full time Christian radio stations. Preaching every conceivable gospel, doctrine, singing around the clock. You can hear music, the old hymns and mellow, soft, gentle music put you to sleep. You can hear the contemporary Christian music. You can hear music that blows your brains out. Christian rock, I don't know, metal, whatever they call that. I don't know what they are saying but something they are saying. You could not go to any shopping center in America and couldn't find Bibles on the book rack. And Christian books. 1.3 billion people in China travel all over the country. You will not find a book shop like that. 1 billion people in India, you will not find a Christian radio station. 500,000 villages in India that never had a chance to hear. Christ died for them. Half of the world have never seen one page of the Bible. I want to ask you, not to put you on any kind of trip. I am not here to put you on guilt trip, no trip I am after. But I just want to ask you a simple question. You that is so exposed to incredible amount of teaching, preaching, every kind of teaching. How much more information you need? How much more Bible knowledge you need before your heart break for half of the world going to hell and forever. And Jesus said, one soul is more precious than the whole wide world. And we say, oh Jesus, I love you. But when it comes to embracing the cross, walking away from our own agendas. We pray and calculate and seek counsel until somebody tell us, oh don't be so fanatical. It just wanes real, just wait later. And we find our answer and we live in harmony and self-centeredness. And the world is going to hell. Do you see, do you see all the people sinking down? Don't you care, don't you care? Are you going to let them drown? How can you be so numb and not to care if they come? You close your eyes and pretend the job is done. Oh bless me Lord, bless me Lord. It is all I ever hear. No one ate, no one hurt, no one even sheds one tear. It is bless me, bless me. Words written by a Jewish convert, Keith Green. How true it is about our church. Maybe about you. This letter came from one of our missionaries working in Hadwar by river Ganges. Recently you must have heard about the Kumbh Mela, where three million people went into the rivers, dipping themselves in the waters to find forgiveness of sin. When this letter came from our missionaries, some 35 million people journeyed during those weeks to river Ganges, going into the polluted, dirty waters for forgiveness of sin. And one evening he was coming home after his ministry. He saw a Hindu young woman sitting by the bank of the river, weeping uncontrollably and pounding upon her chest. By the customs and culture of the people, that must tell you something worse than death itself happened. This young brother went to her and said, What happened? What are you doing? You are so self-desperate. She replied, We are very poor people. My husband is ill. My sins are so many that nobody knows about. To find forgiveness for my sins, solution to the problems of my home, I have given the best offering I can give to Goddess Ganges. My only child, my six-month-old baby boy, I just threw him into the river. In the letter he explained, I sat beside her and told her, But your sins are forgiven. Two thousand years ago, Jesus died for you. All you had to do was to believe. God is not mad at you. He didn't make you poor. And as I explained the gospel to her, she wrote, She wiped her tears, looked straight into my eyes and simply said, But why didn't you come to me half hour sooner? I didn't have to kill my child. It is too late, isn't it? She said, It is too late. She went back crying. We, those who claim to know Christ, continue to live in a world of folk, a world that is for illusion, that we made for ourselves. But the reality is, just like the woman, the bank of river Ganges, they are destined to perish forever. My first years in the United States, I was driven with passion to become normal like anyone else. Materialism became very important. Comfort of living became very important. Fashion, keeping up with the change of times became very important. Knowledge, library books became very important. And finally the Lord began to speak to my heart and said, Son, some 60,000 people daily die and perish in your country. What on earth has happened to your life? You are consumed with things that you want, while the world is going to hell. Didn't I call you to love me more than anyone, even your own very life? I must now pray, saying, Jesus, take eternity and stamp on my eyes. And He began to change my life. I picked up a habit from England before coming to America, using a certain name, brand name, deodorant soap. When I came to this country, I found it, imported. And I would buy it, $1.50 per bar. And when the Lord broke my heart, I switched from that brand name to Ivory. $0.35. I don't use Ivory now. I don't recommend it to you either. It's one of the most hopeless things there is in the market, I think. But that was 23 years ago. My reasoning was this. When half of the world wait to hear Jesus' name, they have not seen one page of the Bible. What right do I have to live like this? And I calculated that difference between $1.50 and $0.35 means hundreds more people can hear the name Jesus. Some of our native missionaries in northwest of India, they are preaching on the street and distributing gospel tracts. A Hindu Brahmin in his late 50s came up and got a gospel tract in Hindi language. It so happened, the man had cancer in his body and he was running away from his home to commit suicide. No one ever told him about Jesus. Now on the street he reads, First time, Jesus died for him. His sins are forgiven. All he must do is simply believe it. There is hope. There was a prayer he could pray on the end of the booklet. And he prayed that prayer to Jesus, a God he never prayed to before. And all of a sudden he felt peace coming into his heart. Something happened. He didn't kill himself. He went back home with the address on the back of the booklet where our mission station was stamped. He went to our people and explained what happened to him. But before he would do that, he felt so well physically. He went to the hospital and said, Doctor, can you check him? He said, We did everything we can for you. There is nothing more we can do. But Doc, I feel so good. Just one more time, can you? OK. They put him through all the tests in the world and said, What did you ate? You are completely cured. He pulled the booklet out of his pocket and said, Doc, this cured me. They thought he went cuckoo. And he rushed to Kota and explained to our brothers all this. And explained to him what Jesus did for him. And he began to weep and said, Ah, now I know. This Jesus is my God. And he said, You know what? I am the landlord in my village. Would you send two of your people to make all my people Christians? How naive, how innocent. He did not understand how this thing worked. Two of our missionaries were sent. They began to preach the gospel. Week after week after week, 20, 30, 10 people began to come to Christ. Baptized. Today a church with over 150 others and people worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. The man built the land, the money, the materials and built the church. The first church to construct in the community ever. And a people worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ. How did that happen? With one gospel tract. That cost less than what I pay for a chewing gum. There should never be a dichotomy in our life. When we look at life and eternity, it's all the same in one package. What I am, what I think, what I do, affects, impacts time and eternity. Therefore evaluate all things in the light of eternity. This is how Christ lived. You read that about drinking and eating in John 4. Tomorrow I am in Dallas. Tuesday I will catch a Lufthansa flight to India and Sri Lanka. I look forward to meeting others and sisters on the mission field. Because 11,000 of them scattered in 8 nations. I will not meet all of them but here and there I meet 100, 200, 300, 10, 20 leaders and people on the mission field. I think about brothers like Simon Kunjur in Bihar. Came from a tribal background. Hardly 20, 22 year old young man. He loved Christ so much that all he wanted was to preach the gospel but didn't know how to do it. So he came to a training center and got his education. I prayed and the Lord told him to go to a mission field. And the brother said, Well Simon I don't know if you want to go there because it is kind of a rough, hard place to do anything. He said no I will go there because I feel Jesus is telling me to go to that place. On the path of North and Bihar he found himself in a community where a lady called Manjula, a Hindu priestess controlling the entire community. And she is the most powerful religious entity in the region. But as he reached there he found something else. This Manjula was now laying in her house for the past 3 years or so paralyzed from neck down. And hundreds of her followers would pray and offer sacrifices and all kind of things. But nothing helped. So our young brother went to her and witnessed her about Jesus. And she said, Here I am, nobody helping me, none of my Gods helps. He said Jesus can help you. And he had the courage to say, Well I pray to Jesus he will heal you but if he does what would you do? If he heals me I will serve him the rest of my life. This young brother quietly said, Lord if you ever did a miracle this is your good chance. I have no other way to do anything here, this is a rough place. Please Lord for your sake and for the sake of this people would you heal her? He laid his hand on this woman and prayed. You guessed, Jesus healed her. She was made well, completely and totally. The news spread throughout the community. Our priestess Manjula is now praying and worshipping a new God, Jesus. She was baptized publicly. The following week some 25 more people would commit their lives to Christ. The following week more and more and more. Today they have five churches planted in the five villages in that area. Harvest, harvest time. Some time ago I met a brother who in a meeting said, My legs hurt. I said did somebody beat you up? He said no I had to stand in the river and baptize 85 people. I said you should be happy. He said yeah but I had to baptize 135 more next Sunday. I said oh now you got a problem. Every day close to six churches are planted every single day on the mission field. People that never had a chance to know Jesus come into Jesus. Some of our brothers when they have public meetings preach the gospel for one full hour. And invite people to forsake all their idols and deities and follow Christ with repentance. 90% of the audience raise their hand and weep and stand up asking Christ to come into their life. It is harvest time. Christ be that individual who sleeps during the harvest time. Jesus said my children yeah I am hungry too. I am concerned about all the things you are concerned about. But something far more significant. I am different. Be like me. Look away from your world. Walk away from it. And see the harvest. And I am sending you to reap the harvest that you didn't do nothing about. It is free ride. It is all yours. My mother prayed three and a half years every Friday with full fasting. Her prayer Jesus called one of my sons to be a missionary. We are six boys in my family. I am the youngest. One by one they went to farming, business, different things. She had great hopes in all her other sons because they were much more stronger, able. And when I was growing up timid, skinny, shy she lost all her hope. That's when she decided to fast and pray. When I finished my high school I came to my parents and said if you will allow me I would like to go and be a missionary, Christian worker. Before I could finish my sentence my mother said please go. I said unwanted child. Two years of my life in North India in Rajasthan with Operation Mobilization. Life was not easy. Came back to see my parents and she was crying when she saw me. The following day she will tell me for the first time the story about her prayers which I never knew. In 1990 I was scheduled to speak in Seoul, Korea. And I was on the way to Korea when I reached Bombay. One day I heard my mother was taken ill, admitted in the hospital. I canceled my trip, went to the hospital. She never been ever sick like that. She had heart problem at the age of 84. And that weekend my mother died. The memory of my mother as I was growing up in that village. Five feet, three inches taller, tiny little woman. Never been to college, never been to university, never traveled outside of her state. Thoroughly, completely, fully a village woman. But she loved Jesus. I saw her often alone praying, tears running down from her eyes. Her Bible is the only book she ever read. She had no other books. Funeral took place. Now I must go back to America. Six sons all of us met to talk about our mother's last wish. One of my brother who is a businessman said, Our mother must have left a lot of money in the bank. Because according to customs we would give her money, all the sons. But we never saw her spending any money. As a matter of fact, we didn't know what she was doing with it. To the question, my oldest brother said, He found, he said, this little book under the pillow of my mother's bed. The bed she was sleeping on. And he opened it up and said, Believe it or not, this book is filled with scribblings, with pencil of names of dozens of young people studying in Bible schools in different parts of India. Missionaries in North India, everywhere, that are serving Jesus. And against their names, the amount of money she was sending every month. But she never told this to anyone. I began to weep. Not because there was no money in the bank. I remembered one time when I was visiting my home in the United States. I saw my mother wearing this blouse with the stitches. And I was so angry. I said, Mother, what madness got into your head? Don't you have any feelings for your sons? You are putting cow dung on our face, bringing shame upon us. The whole community will think that we don't take care of you. You have money to buy a new dress every month if you want. How come you do this to us? With her wonderful smile, I remember she said, You little fellow don't understand nothing, someday you will understand. And that made me more upset. But now it was as though she walked into the room without words, very gently speaking, My son, you never understood it, but now you understand. Your mother lived for something that nobody understood. A world that did not know Jesus. And all she wanted was to see them come to Jesus. Yes, I had money to buy a new dress every month if that's what I wanted. But something more precious, I found, the souls of men and women. The last wish of my mother was this, When I am dead and gone, the only thing I leave behind, My wedding ring, my earring, and the gold chain my husband gave me the day he married me. I wanted to sell these items and give that money to preach the gospel. Among people that never heard his name, I want to meet them also in heaven. If I had a choice, I do not want to spend one day in America to preach to anyone in this country. Most of the young people, much younger than me, You do not know the millions of miles I have traveled, And spoken to hundreds of thousands of church-going people, People like you also, Shadowed, plastic, watered down, seeking honor from others, Loving money and comfort and ease, Yet on the other hand, claiming to follow him, Who said, son of man has no place in this head, Who said, as the father sent me, so send I you, Go with a one-way ticket and give your life away. But I keep on traveling, keep on speaking, Not out of spite or anger or pain, But with love, hoping that you are one, That you will hear the call, That he said, come, follow me. And his footsteps will take you not to mansions, Not to bed of roses, But to the villages, The suffering, the poor, the naked, The half of the world, The dying without him and perishing. Would you commit your life to be like him? I am grateful that I can still hear my mother saying, Son, it's worth it, walk on this narrow road. Some applications I would want to say and conclude. One, make a commitment, To take prayer life and fasting serious, For the lost world. Countries like Afghanistan with some 17 million people Without one church in the entire country. North and Bihar, 22 million people Without hardly anyone walking among them. And Bhutan, a forbidden land for preaching the gospel, By God's grace we have 18 churches planted, House churches in Bhutan, Nepal, Hindu kingdom, And China, and on and on. And North Korea, where you must be praying, I am sure you are. And at least one day of the week you will commit for fasting, On the behalf of the lost world. I had a world map with me, I think I left it somewhere. When the Lord gripped my heart, When the first thing happened, Don't you have a world map there? Can you throw it to me? It will hit somebody along the way, maybe. Here is John Beers, my co-worker. And Jonathan also, 3 of us came together. John was a banker in Seattle area. 10-12 years ago the Lord called him to serve Him, And he left his nice positions, And sold his house, And took his wife and kids and moved to Dallas To work for Gospel of Asia. If God is calling any one of you to give your life full time, To serve God, We are looking for all kinds of people, And strange people also, To serve God with us on the staff, Please talk to us. When the first thing I did, When the Lord touched my heart 23 years ago, World map came into our home, everywhere. 1040 window region highlighted. By the way, You know the Simon I told you about? The tribal missionary who plants 5 churches? That is him. Read it. You can get this world map, And put in your apartment, Your one room house, Whatever you got. And really let you and Jesus have wonderful time. You know what? One of the funniest thing I did, I bought a shower curtain from Kmart, plastic. While taking a shower, You can look at the world map. Second thing I recommend you to do is, Seek to simplify your life. I wrote a whole book about it. Wrote reality. Let no one tell you what car, house, Anything you should have or not have. I have friends who drive BMW, And are millionaires, And have nice clothes. That has nothing to do with spirituality. But you, But for you, Ask the Lord how you must live. Half of the world goes to bed with empty stomach and naked bodies. You, my young friend, Don't pursue the American dream. It's a dead end. You'll never keep up with the Jones. There's always a bigger Jones next door. Don't do it. Nothing worth fighting for. Thirdly, If the Lord is calling you to give your life For serving Him in GFA or somewhere, whatever, Then listen. Take the risk. Jesus will go with you. Don't ask Him more questions. Finally, 99% of you, Will not go to India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan. I know you will not. You may go for a few weeks. But 10-14 in your region, Right now we have 11,000 missionaries on the field, And we have hundreds, That are right now getting ready to launch out to places, Where no one has ever gone before. But the question is, How will they go except they descend? There's a card given to you in the bulletin. The fourth application is, I'm asking you, Would you be willing, Prayerfully, Decide, To link your life, With one or two or ten native missionaries. Help them with your prayer and financial support, To preach the gospel. He said, Brother KP, what does that mean? It simply means, Today, If you fill this card out with your name and address, And mark here, Starting now, I will prayerfully help sponsor, One missionary, two missionary, Whatever number you want to put, With $30 a month, That individual or individuals, Becomes your hand, Your eyes, Your heart, Touching these nations, Leading thousands to Christ, Planting churches. When you fill this out, Bring to the book table, Out there on the ground floor, Or somewhere, I think John Geers will be telling you that, We will give you your missionary, To take home with you. You see it's a real flesh and blood missionary. Authentic. His name, His testimony, The whole thing is here. We are hundreds of them. So all you need to do, Is fill this, And say, We want support, I want to support these missionaries, And then you can take these missionaries home with you, Today, Start praying for them, Put them in the refrigerator, In the Bible, Whatever else, And every month, We write you a letter, With what the Lord is doing, You can send your support in, And today, You don't need to have your money, Or checkbook, For you to get your missionary. All you need to do, Is to bring this card, And take the missionaries home, And later you can send your money. One hundred percent, Of the money you send, All go to the mission field. Nobody take anything out of it. And it helps to preach the gospel. And when they plant the church, Become self-supporting, You don't need to help them anymore. Yesterday I met a couple from this church, Said, Oh we were supporting missionaries, And three of our missionaries, Became self-supporting. That means they planted three churches. They can support somebody else. I am sending you, To reap the harvest, That you didn't work for. May, The Lord, Help you, To take, That step of faith, To commit your life, To reap this mighty harvest. And I pray that all of you, Will decide, To help, One or more, Of these missionaries, Reach in the lost world. It's our privilege. May the Lord speak to us. Amen.