In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes the importance of doing the will of God and finishing His work. He references John chapter 4, where Jesus tells his disciples that his meat is to do the will of the one who sent him. The preacher encourages the audience to lift up their eyes and see the fields that are ready for harvest, reminding them that there is work to be done in spreading the word of God. He addresses the tendency for people to feel discouraged or inadequate in comparison to others who may be doing missionary work in different parts of the world, but emphasizes that the call to do God's work begins where they are.

When the children spoke, or sang just now, I thought, that's something that the adults need to learn. About turning the knob, shutting the door, and turning your back, and walking away. Lots of adults haven't learned to do that. Hmm, very telling, very powerful. It's amazing how the Lord can speak through such simple things. Many people are absolutely glued, aren't they? And have no ability to exercise their will. And therefore, sit and suck, and suck, and suck, are things that are unable to find life's destroyance. Praise God. I hope you understood what they were singing. Many people don't even understand that. Praise God. Now, if you have your New Testament with you this morning, I'd like you to turn with me into John chapter 4. I want just to read a few verses. Verse 31. In the meanwhile, his disciples prayed him, saying, Master, eat. And he said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of. Therefore said the disciples one to another, Had any man brought him o'er to eat? And Jesus said unto them, My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Say not ye there are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white, all ready to harvest. And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. And herein is that saying true. One soweth, another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereon ye bestowed no labour. Other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours. And of course that's what we're all doing, beloved, entering into other men's labours. We are the subjects of a phenomenal legacy over the years, back through the generations, that's come to us in one way or another. We enjoy what we enjoy today because people have gone before us and have been utterly faithful. Glory. We're just a mere link in a chain, a drop in the ocean, a speck on the horizon. Glory to his name. It's God who knows the sum total of all things, and has the ability to assess that which is of eternal value, and that which has done and will continue to contribute to your life and my life. Praise his name. I wonder how many of you know this verse. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. That's a quotation from Jeremiah, chapter 8 and verse 20. The harvest is past, the summer is over, and we are not saved. That was a verse of scripture that the Lord brought to the heart of a friend of mine who was a minister in Harrogate in Yorkshire. God woke him up in the night and spoke this word right deep down into the depths of his being. He was a minister, but he wasn't saved. The primary reason for his not being saved was that he was accommodating bitterness and resentment and malice in his heart. And this is all added up and focalized itself on one particular person or him. It was very specific, but God wouldn't let him get away with it. He woke him up in the middle of the night, and it was about this time of the year. The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. And he knew that he wasn't saved. And then God explained to him why he wasn't saved. He had a vendetta in his heart against a man who was the town councillor. In fact, he was the chairman of the town council. A Christian man who wasn't the easiest of people to like on an actual level. And every time that he heard this man minister, every time that this man came into his church, or if he was a member of his congregation, something rose up in him that caused him to hate him, despise him, to wish that he wasn't there. And he got up out of his bed, and went to the town clerk in the middle of the night, and knocked on his door, confessed his sin, repented of it, and God came and blessed him. Amen. The harvest is past. The summer is ended, and we are not saved. Amen, that's true, the harvest is past. I asked the farmer who was living, I said, have you got all the harvest in? He said, yes, only a couple of bales to lift. The harvest is past. The summer is almost ended. When God spoke to him and said, you're not saved, he knew that it didn't just involve him, because he was only another link in the chain. He knew that God had called him, he knew that God had set him apart for himself, he knew that he was to be a minister of God, but he couldn't be what he wasn't himself. So he realised that the salvation that God was talking about, to him, wasn't just a personal issue. It was an issue which was going to affect the lives of many, many other people. And when God had dealt with him, he revolutionised society. He wouldn't have used the language that we do. But it was obvious from his testimony that at that point in time he was born again, filled with the Holy Ghost, and became a man of God, instrumental in the hands of God to the bringing of many other people into the kingdom. He was lifted up out of a rut of mere evangelicalism, and brought into a realm where the gospel became a living reality in his life. He was the first minister under which I was privileged to train and serve, and I thank God for every remembrance of the man, and all that I learnt from him. Bless God. I wasn't saved either, when I became his spirit. And I'd left his parish before I did. Glory to his name. Verse 35, it says, Say ye not, there are yet four months, and then cometh the harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are white, all ready to harvest. And Jesus wasn't talking about the foreign mission field here, primarily. You can apply it in that way, and it can expand and expand and expand as far as you like to make it go. But in fact he was talking about the locality in which he actually was at that moment in time. He was in Samaria. He'd just encountered the woman at the well. And he was talking to his disciples who were a pack of delinquents, and seeking to convince them that they needed to establish a priority in their life and buy up their present opportunity. You know, so often when we read these sort of scriptures, when we read the scriptures that come at the end of the Gospels, like going into all the world and preach the Gospels to every creature, our minds immediately go miles and miles and miles away from where we are. And that will be the interpretation of that working for some of us. Amen. But for many of us it won't. The place where this lovely true celebrity is to become relevant is in the place that we presently live. Lift up your eyes. Say ye not there are yet four months, and then come at the harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes and look on the field. Behold, there are white and all ready to harvest. Where you are. Blessed be his name. Lots of people get disillusioned, discouraged. Say when there was a meeting last night, they sort of look at the person up the front testifying to this, working in Chad, working in Thailand, working in Bhutan, working in Africa, and they think, where am I? I couldn't cope with that, I couldn't live like that, I couldn't be that, I couldn't go there, I couldn't go here. And there's a tendency to think that you're a second-class citizen, that you have been bypassed and there's not a place for you. But it doesn't begin there. That lovely scripture in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, when it says, you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth. And the uttermost part of the earth, beloved, fundamentally is no different from the place where you're living. Lots of us have glamorous ideas, and philosophical ideas, beloved, of what it means to live the other side of the world, to live in Xi'an, for instance, or to live in Khonsamba, or to live in that town in Chad that our brother was talking about. Fundamentally, it's very little different. The climate may be different, the food may be different, the people may be different, the language may be different, there may be other problems and difficulties to overcome, but essentially and fundamentally, what you are there, if you ever go there, will only be what you have proved and discovered yourself to be at home. You won't accomplish anything more, the other side of the world, than you have accomplished or are accomplishing in your own situation. If you have no ability, beloved, to go to your neighbour, or to minister faithfully in your own city, you won't have any ability to do that elsewhere. It's no different. And all those who shared last night would ratify that, I'm sure. It's absolutely no different. Jesus wasn't talking about the distant parts of the earth, he was talking about the situation in which he was, and he had just demonstrated by his own actions, and he got the example of the woman who had been the subject of his actions, beloved, to prove that it was to happen there. One of the lovely things is that Jesus never asked you and me to do what he hasn't done himself. Let the Lord. Lift up your eyes. Look onto the fields. They're fine, all ready to harvest. Don't say, there are yet four months. That's the natural tendency. Procrastinate, put it off. Tomorrow, or the next week, or the next year. No, there is a time, we saw from the very beginning, there is a time of preparation, there is a time of waiting, there is a time when you have to allow God to come and minister to your own heart, to get the beam out of your eyes, before you can start ministering to the moat that is in your brother's eyes. But God is the God of the eternal now. Lift up your eyes. Look on the fields, your village, your town, your streets, your home. That's where God wants us to begin. Blessed be his name. And as you begin there, brother, then God will take you on, for this situation or that situation. Our sister was sharing how she prayed that the Lord would give her the ability to speak here and there, the person on the bus, the person walking up the road last night. Amen. Glory be to God. I want us to look in this lovely chapter at how Jesus redeemed the situation that was very real for him. Go back into the early part of the chapter. It says in verse 1, When therefore the Lord knew how the Pharisees had heard that Jesus made and baptized more disciples than John, though Jesus himself baptized not but his disciples, he left Judea and parted into Galilee, and he must need go through Samaria. Then cometh he to a city of Samaria, that which is called Sica, near to a parcel of land that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And Jacob's well being there, Jesus being wearied with his journey, sat thus on the well, and it was about the sixth hour. Amen. Here is the first great principle that motivated Jesus and must motivate every man and woman who is going to redeem the situation in which they find themselves and buy it up for the Lord. It says he must need go through Samaria. Amen. In the heart of Jesus there was a great eternal must. There was something on the inside of him that motivated him and moved him and directed him and led him and brought him to the place where God wanted him to be again and again. He didn't just drift through life. Sometimes people read the gospel record and they get the impression that Jesus was something like a hippie who sort of drifted from pillar to post. There was no rhyme or reason or plan for his life. But you read the gospel properly brothers you'll find that the whole of his life from the beginning to the end was directed, ordered and governed by a great divine and eternal plan. Amen. That's why he said I must be about my father's business. Amen. And that was right early on in his life. At the age of twelve he said I must be about my father's business. But there in his heart parents had gone up to Jerusalem at least. They'd lost it. Come back and eventually found him. When they said to him Where have you been? What have you been doing? Overriding all his filial affection and obedience Beloved there was this great eternal must in his heart. Amen. That follows him all his day. If you want to look at it that was in Luke chapter 2. If you look into Luke chapter 4 you'll find the same lovely truth. Verse 43 Luke chapter 4 verse 43 He said unto them I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also for therefore am I said. He wasn't going at his own whim. He wasn't going at his own fancy. There was that in him that said I must. Paul had it in him didn't he? He said woe is unto me if I preach not the gospel. I must. It wasn't an external pressure. It wasn't something that someone else was demanding that he should do. But this internal thing, beloved that multiplied in him. Glory to his name. Turn over into Luke chapter 13 you find it again. And verse 33 He said nevertheless I must walk today and tomorrow and the day following for it cannot be that a prophet should perish out of Jerusalem. It's all a part of the unfolding of God's great eternal plan. Some of it had been written in heaven had been written on the earth in the book. And every moment of his life every step that he took was conforming to that pattern and that plan that God had for him. I must walk. Very simple thing isn't it? Walking. Walking is putting one step in front of another. I must walk. Do you see the reality of this great eternal must that had regulated even the most trivial seemingly trivial part of the life of the Lord Jesus. There was nothing outside of its context. I must. I must. Turn over into John chapter 9 verse 4 He said I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day for the night cometh when no man can work. I must work. I love that scripture redeem the time for the days are evil. I once lived with a lady who was the embodiment of that scripture. She never gave you the impression that she was under pressure that she was ever in a hurry. There were things more important than the thing that she was doing. She had this tremendous ability to focus all her attention and all her love and all her affection on the very thing that she found herself engaged in. But there was a tremendous pattern in her life. The reveal of what she accomplished was just amazing. But never any sense of pressure to the full-time school teacher. I lived with her. This is how I know her. She was my landlady. She was a full-time school teacher. She had her own family. She always had a number of people living with her. She was an avid reader. She was a great letter writer. She did all our laundry. She did all our ironing. She did all the cooking. She was a Methodist lay preacher. She was always out speaking at meetings. She was taking this person and that person. I remember the day she had all her teeth out. That was a traumatic day. We thought there would be no dinner the day. Things will really go to the bitties. This will really prove that she can't keep it up. She went to the dentist and had all her teeth out after having been at school all day. Went to the dentist after school and had all her teeth out. They put dentures straight back in. She came home, beloved, cooked the tea, got her car out, and took four old ladies out for a drive. She still was sitting by the fire or the embers of remaining of the fire at two o'clock in the morning doing other things. Amen. Well, if you were set and tried to pattern your life on her life, beloved, from a natural point of view, you'd be under the floorboard. Amen. But I believe that the explanation to that woman's life, beloved, and the work that she accomplished, was that she got this great must in her life. Her life was ordered by the Spirit of God. She learned. As I say, she was the embodiment of that scripture. Redeemed the time for the days of evil. She bought up. She knew how to buy up the moment, the opportunity, as they appeared. Now if your life gives the impression that it's all pressure, it's all drive, it's all push, you're one of these people who's driven, you're a workaholic, or this and that, then there's something wrong with you. Amen. You haven't understood what Jesus knew, beloved. You haven't understood what that woman knew. And she's in her 90s now and still going strong. She's frail and fragile compared with what she was in those days. Amen. But that still, that spark of life, that vitality is still there. She still writes endless letters with her trembling hands. Isn't it wonderful how God brings people into your lives, beloved, who are suffering just a benediction to you. Amen. Praise God for every soul that I've met who has ministered into my life both consciously and unconsciously. Jesus said, I must work. Over in to John chapter 10, where we were the other morning when we didn't get very far. Verse 15, As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father, and I lay down my life for the sheep, other sheep have I which are not of this fold, them also I must bring. And they shall hear my voice, and there shall be one fold and one shepherd. Glory to his name. All the way through the life of Jesus, beloved. You get this underlying realization that there was a motivation that ordered and directed the life of Jesus and caused him to be in the place where his Father wanted him to be at the right time. That's how he thought again, wasn't it? God had the right people in the right time, the right people at the right time in the right place for the right man to be born. Glory. That's when you come to appreciate the love of God, great sovereign, overruling and ordering of all things. And once you get principles like that settled deep down in your heart, don't take all the fret and worry and anxiety and stress and strain out of you and you come into what Hebrews 3 and 4 talks about when it says there is a rest for the people of God. The people who accomplish most, beloved, are those who know that great internal must, that great ordering and planning of God in their life that holds them. Their life isn't fritted away by rushing from one place to another, endlessly searching for this or that from the other. There's a quality, a dignity, a tidiness, an orderliness about their lives. Amen. You're not constantly missing the boat, or riding in the wrong place at the wrong time. And even when you miss the plane, beloved, you don't fret and worry about it. Some of the most wonderful things that have ever happened, some of the most wonderful encounters that I've ever had, beloved, have been the result of missing planes or buses having to ride. I remember another missionary family, they were in India, they were planning to go on the night bus to Kathmandu. They missed it. One sent it through all their plans and all their arrangements out, That bus never arrived in Kathmandu, it went over the cusps and landed in the river and everyone on it perished. What a wonderful thing, the woman on it. I remember once in Calcutta, I'd been sitting for about six hours, I think. She's ever flown on internal Indian airlines. You know how irregular and how irresponsible and how impossible they are. You find yourself sitting on an airport and you get all uptight and mad and you want to hear and see how people behave. You really know what people are like on the inside when things get under pressure. I remember once sitting on Calcutta airport and I saw a young man going up and down. He was a porter. Everything in me wanted to talk to him. So I thought, well he won't understand any English and I thanked him. I said to the Lord, next time I come to if I see him I'll talk to him. Well the next time I came from Calcutta airport there he was again. Again I was delayed. There he was walking up and down. In fact he was standing right behind me when I arrived and he carried my luggage and he understood about a dozen or twenty words of English. That's all things which enabled him to do his job. He discovered his name. His name was Bijoy Nandy. And on numerous occasions I went through Calcutta after that and every time I would bump into this young fellow and we cultivated a relationship. I took him out for a meal. I talked to him about the Lord. In fact eventually discovered someone who could speak Bengali and got him Bengali New Testament. Was able to introduce him to a pastor who lived just a few yards away from the house where he lived. All seeming to be a disaster what turned into a glorious opportunity being in the right place at the right time. Recognizing the situation buying it up because you've got that great must I must That's how Jesus happened to be by Cyprus Libre in Samaria. You know the story don't you? Any Jew in his right mind would have avoided they would have paid double to go round but he didn't because he knew that he must be there. Are you where you are today beloved brother? You must be there. Isn't that how B.B. and her husband got to the conference last year? It meant I don't believe it was just the sort of sentimental sentiment they wanted to be where all the other Mount Collins Christians were. They'd gone. Wonderful when you know that way and yield to it and know that you're not the victim of circumstance anymore. The hit and miss experience ceases to be and you are where you are and know it without a shadow of doubt and then you can expect things to happen. Glory be to God. I quoted a scripture from Genesis 24 the other morning I being in the way the Lord led me. Bless God. The right place at the right time because you know you're there in the leading of the Lord. It's not coincidence it's not accident. Amen. Some years ago I'm sure I told you a story of how once we were in Wales and I literally bumped into someone on the pavement unbeknown to me that person had been looking for me in Liverpool that morning in fact had phoned up a fellowship house and asked if I was there. They said no he's away on holiday and no one knows where he is. Whether they knew or not I can't remember now but they knew that they weren't allowed to divulge it. Amen. And a sequence of events happened beloved that whereby we came into a street in a place called Bangor I got out of the car to go round to this corner to buy some lunch to feed our three boys before going up to church in the afternoon. A fellow came out of like and we collided on the pavement. Amen. He said where did you come from? I said where did you come from? He said in the shop I said I came out of my car and I'm going round here. He said and he explained that he'd rung up Liverpool in the morning that he wanted to see me because he had a problem and he wanted to talk it and the Lord had spoken to him and told him he was to communicate with me and he was utterly perplexed because I wasn't there. Amen. And there we were on the pavement. He didn't know I was in Bangor I didn't know he was anywhere around. I being in the way the Lord led me. That's how Jesus came to be in Samaria that day. It was a plan arranged in heaven an appointment that the Father had dictated to the heart of the Son because he wanted him to meet some. In simple words beloved he lived tentatively for the spirit of his Father. That's the secret. That's what takes the fret that's what takes the worry that's what takes the anxiety all away even less. Here's the second great principle verse 6 Now Jacob was there now Jacob's well was there Jesus therefore being wearied with his journey and he didn't use that as an excuse sat thus on the well and it was about the sixth hour that's the hour of man there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water Jesus said unto her give me a drink. Amen. If you want to buy up your opportunity by the journey you have to learn to identify with men and women when where you find them. He came and sat on the well on many occasions in scripture where people came and sat on a well the outworking of which was tremendous bless the Lord Jesus came and sat on the well he was sitting there when the woman arrived. He violated all the barriers political barriers social barriers cultural barriers and identified himself totally and absolutely with this woman Bernard said to us the other day it will be a very good study for all of us to discover the attitude of Jesus for women in the scripture Jesus is the person beloved who reinstates upon women dignity that they were originally intended to have when they were created you go to many parts of the world beloved women are not looked upon with dignity in fact they are just means to an end they are victims of circumstances and they live a life of agony and fear and terror they are just things to be used to fulfill the desires of lustful men they do all the work they beget all the children they endure all the agony they know little of the dignity that relates to true womanhood only Jesus beloved who restores a woman to her proper dignity that's one of the wonderful things that happens to a woman when she becomes a Christian she has an identity that she never knew she could have before glory be to God Jesus broke through all the barriers he wasn't interested in politics as such he wasn't interested in the social order which was that man had impinged upon society he wasn't interested in the rules that regulated the behaviour of men and women he was above it he was over it all glory to his name he sat down and he identified himself utterly with her now that's very true brothers we're ever going to go overseas Gary mentioned it last night the thing that horrified him in Sierra Leone when he and Eileen were there working the fact that there was a missionary couple there who lived in the house and they had guard dogs to keep the people away I know of a similar situation in the north west of Nepal where there were missionaries they had a big fence around their house and no Nepali brother was ever allowed to go through the gate if they wanted to communicate with the missionaries they had to shout over the gate and call him they were not allowed to go inside of the compound I was amazed brother that young man who told me that had ever become a Christian in that context but he had because God is greater than the failure of men blessed be his name I know another brother who went to Pakistan he was a friend of the missionaries who were working there he lives in the United Kingdom but he's a Pakistani himself and at the end of a month they said to him Mance you have accomplished more in one month than we have done in 25 years he said I hadn't got the nerve to tell them why he said their compound was just like a little piece of England no one wanted to go in there they didn't feel at home they didn't feel that they belonged it was so foreign and alien to them probably one of the most important things that you ever are called of God to go outside of the environment of your own culture is that you have to ask God to give you the ability to adapt and to identify and to become as completely involved in that situation as it is humanly possible Amen and lots of people go out these days and they go out to sort of taste the food and to feel the climate and to feel the beds and a multitude of other things beloved and if it's not conducive they conclude that they've never been caught Amen and that's why many of them break down and Paul Burnham was lamenting the fact beloved that how many was it sixty odd percent of people never go through now he said he was talking about young people and I thought well Hudson Taylor was young Dan Crawford was young David Livingston was young but there's a fundamental difference beloved between those young men and many of the young people today that was that they'd heard the call of God they'd got the great internal moth rising up in their heart they didn't go out beloved to sample it Amy Carmichael said out beloved she went via China via Japan via Sri Lanka landed in South India and never came back for fifty one years and she died there and spent twenty odd years on her bag and what kept her there was because she knew that she must Amen and when that must is inside of you there comes with it grace to enable you to identify with the situation into which she has taken you now that might be the other side of the world or it might be next door of being able to identify and align yourself with the people that are the sensual monks I'm a country boy by birth born in an idyllic little village in the south of England called Washington the rolling hills the lovely fields I landed up eventually over in Liverpool Lake that's downtown Liverpool Doxas where they had all the the what a place that was I said I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end we had an average murder at least once a month in our parish the news of the world called it Liverpool's filthy mile square in which I lived was the trade fair for women you couldn't sit in your car for more than two minutes without being accosted every young person that I prepared for confirmation I was manager and minister in those days was illegitimate without exception one boy who used to regularly come to me he was the 17th child of a prostitute he didn't even know the names of his brothers and sisters slept under a tombstone in a cemetery by the cathedral for three years just recently I met one of the lads who I knew when he was a lad about this high he rang me up in fact Jenny and I Jenny had said to me some months ago we must try and find a lad called Johnny Drysdale now he was a lad who came for the very early meetings in the fellowship two days later there was a telephone call a man on the end of the phone said he won't know me you probably won't even remember me I said what's your name he said Johnny he said Kenny Drysdale I said no Johnny's brother he said yes he's younger brother that's why I'm bringing you he wants to find you that's just three days after Jenny had said to me we must try and find him have you found that that often the people remember bring to your heart someone somewhere beloved and you pray and you look to the Lord and within a matter of day that person reappears that happens so many times where are you he said I'm in Granby Street now Granby Street is the most notorious street in the whole world and I said to this young man can I come round and see you he said I've got a barbershop it's called the new creation barbershop in Granby Street right out of the biggest drug running joint beloved in the whole of Liverpool the new creation and then he said above my barbershop he said I've got a drug awareness clinic he's trying to help young people warning them off the iniquities of drug running and I went round to see him he said it's amazing that I'm alive he said they ran me down last year they tried a knife in right through he jumped and the knife went through this side of his arm and came out of this side and they almost chopped his hand off and he ran with them chasing him and he was just about to collapse on the road when a police van arrived arrested the two fellows and took him to hospital and you know he said to me he said I am where I am today because when I was a little tiny boy he said you came to our house to visit my mother was a prophetess in fact she was a glad regent and her family was like the United Nations I didn't even know that all her children were related because they were virtually every colour and every nationality that you could imagine and she got a great gaggle and he said to me we are the product of our mother's living and he said the agony the agony that our family has endured because of it god has put him over it he said but you came he said our dad that was the current one was ill and you came he was in our parishes he I went to visit him and he said before you left our house he said you knelt down in our basement on the stone flags and you prayed for us as a family and he said at that moment I became god conscious I didn't know anything about this he said I became god conscious that was his own term he said some months later two of my sisters and I went to a Christian meeting he said a man preached and he said I was convicted of sin in a way that I've never known before and he said I turned to my sister and I said do you have to be able to read the bible to be a Christian she said of course you do you fool he said that was it I couldn't read she said I just despaired and gave up no point in responding he said I had to wait another eleven years when I was in solitary confinement in prison and he said the reason I was in solitary confinement because I wasn't only a villain outside the prison I was a villain inside the prison and he said there was a nun who went around our jail with good books she'd start at the top and all the good books went at the top by the time she got to the bottom only the ones that no one else wanted to read were left and they happened to be Christian books and he said as a result of reading a Christian book in solitary confinement God came to me and delivered me and set me free and made me another man that's over nineteen years ago and that young man is still going strong glory to his name amen you have to be prepared beloved to identify with the people amongst whom God has put you that meant for me living at night rather than in the day because people didn't live in the day in that area I told you I'd been reading the life story of the vicar of Nathalie John Fletcher I'd been tremendously challenged when he first went to Nathalie thought it was an absolute sin of iniquity amen he began to preach and some people began to respond and some people were diametrically opposed to everything that he was and everything that he preached and he said every time he went down the street he came to a house where he knew that his enemies were he said I'd pause at the gate and lift my heart to heaven and pray that God would save him he said again and again God answered my prayers he totally identified with the people amongst whom God had sent him if you go to India you have to be Indian as far as you can be if you go to Africa you have to live with the Africans and be as African as possible as you can amen do you know once when I was in Komsomol I think it was the first time I was there I went to the market and a woman said to me a black woman she said you're not living with that black man are you now if a white person had said that we would have thought well that's racialism but this was a black lady she said you're not living with that black man are you I'd even forgotten that he was black in fact I'd forgotten that I was white glory to his name amen this is how you will reap the harvest beloved first of all you've got to know that you've got to mass a great call of God upon your life secondly you've got to prepare to identify as far as it is humanly possible and God will take you beyond the human limitation amen and enable you to be and do things beloved that you can never breathe you know I was a boy who had a home where you could literally eat and off the floor my mother would have died a thousand deaths as she'd known some of the things that I got up to back when my parents came to Liverpool late when I was a pirate there my father nearly died on the spot one day we were going down the road and there was a baby in a bin on a lamppost I thought he'd go stare fortunately I knew who the woman was and I was able to go to her and I said is that your baby in the bin she said yes I don't know what else to do with him I said well you better get him out or my dad will bury and sort you out what a contrast between the natural environment and background from which I came to what I found myself in on that occasion on those days and in many situations people often say how do you cope I'm sure Bernard has been asked the same question how do you cope especially if you tell them some of the stories about where you sleep and what you eat and so on how do you cope amen only one explanation to that is that God sheds his love abroad in your heart and you're motivated by that that inspiration that motivated you see he was moved wasn't he he was moved with compassion you read it again and again our brother where is he I've lost him over there somewhere there he is he preached beloved Liza the most of us preached till the morning I don't know what it is for you some of the most magnificent words in the scripture beloved compassion Jesus was moved with compassion the compassion of God is in your heart beloved then you won't know anything without the great eternal love it was the compassion of Jesus didn't stand at harm's length and say oh I healed you I believe he wrapped them all up in love and swallowed everything all of the blood of their lives and spoiled them glory to his name not a picnic Brendan says to me he made that quite clear last night living in Chad is no picnic jeopardizing the life of your wife and your children no picnic read the Bible we often say the Bible how many wives and children we read these things and we thought oh magnificent they seem to have gone out of vogue that's a tragedy not that you can try and be a Hudson Taylor or an Amy Carmichael but that's not the point of reading their biographies when I read those biographies I seek to discover the explanation that made them the people that they were glory to his name here's another lovely principle down in verse 11 the woman said unto him thou hast nothing to draw with and the well is deep from whence hast thou that living water connect that with verse 16 Jesus said go call thy husband and come hither and link it beloved with verse 29 come see a man who told me all things that I ever did is not this the Christ and then all of those verses are saying the same thing this is how Jesus won the heart of this woman beloved first of all he came there in the will and purpose of a father secondly he came and identified utterly and totally with her in her plight and condition thirdly beloved he plumbed the unfathomable depths of her being when she said the well is deep she didn't know what she was talking about she thought that she did but she didn't she was talking about herself that's how Jesus interpreted her he wasn't preoccupied with Jacob's well he was preoccupied beloved with the well if you like or the spring of her being he plumbed the unfathomable depths of her heart he put her he finger dotted right on the thing which was the evidence of the depth of her inward iniquity and loneliness and isolation and sadness and fear and everything else that had isolated her for so long to the point she could say come and see a man who told me all things that I ever did he only told her one thing beloved and that was that the man that she was living with wasn't her husband but she knew that he knew everything that there was to know about her he plumbed the unfathomable depths of her being and discovered her on the inside if you and I are ever going to bring men and women to Jesus Christ beloved by the ability and power of the spirit of God that's where we must come because until that happens beloved we're only skimming over the surface we're only dealing with the superficiality of the manifestation we're not dealing with the root of the problem Jesus came to lay the ax to the root of the tree amen not to pick off just the fruit the root this is how Jesus faithfully dealt with her amen he came by the great discerning spirit of it he saw the cause of her condition amen isn't that wonderful amen let me allow God to do that in you so often we're preoccupied with this problem with that problem the other problem and he touched her problem beloved he touched the depths of her the well is deep there's nothing more unfathomable beloved than the human personality no human being can touch it psychology can't touch it and the tragedies beloved and a lot of Christian counselling is nothing more than rehashed psychology it won't really touch the issue now that doesn't mean to say beloved that psychology has no value psychology is the science of the soul amen and there are some people with emotional problems that can be helped like there are people with physical problems and our doctors help us they help us physiologically a psychologist can help us psychology psychologically amen but no one beloved can deal with that deep inward being of your personality called spirit other than the spirit of the Lord other things can alleviate our problems but they cannot solve them the well is deep all the words in the world beloved won't plumb the unfathomable depth that's why you and I are really going to minister to and meet the needs of men and women we need to know that discerning ability of the spirit of God that enables us to see beyond superficial problems that manifest themselves on the surface and trust God and believe God beloved to reveal things that cannot be known or seen naturally bless God now not only did he deal with the depth of her problems but he introduced her to the answer that would satisfy and meet all of her needs verse 10 Jesus again but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a spring your version probably says well an alternative rendering is fountain the explanation to every well beloved is a spring there are no springs there are no wells we talk about the wells of salvation because we quote from the book prophecy of Isaiah but God takes you beyond the well and gives you the explanation to the well which is a spring the water that I shall give him shall be in him a spring of water or a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life and the woman said sir give me this water it's that spring of living water that springs up into everlasting life that brings you to a place where you will never thirst again ever it's a very powerful strong statement from the lips of Jesus it's not that you will never thirst again it's that you will never thirst again ever do you believe that that's possible isn't that wonderful Jesus didn't just come to alleviate human problems but he came to satisfy them and you and I should never rest until we know that we brought men and women to a place where they have found eternal satisfaction we brought them to the place beloved where they are satisfied where they have discovered for themselves the spring of living water you will see it further down when later on beloved this woman took her took Jesus or Jesus came to the men with whom she had formerly sinned and originally they believed because they saw what he'd done in her that's wonderful after he'd been there a few days beloved they they said they said to her now we believe not because of by saying but we have heard him our tale so many people got to live on something less what I call second hand Christianity what we've read in a book what we've heard in a testimony what we've heard from the preacher that's God but Jesus brought these men beloved to a place where they knew that they heard him themselves they weren't even dependent upon the testimony praise God beloved for every testimony that inspires us and thrills us through and through and does something on the inside of us it draws us on praise God for every person who's prayed for us loved us cared about us but you'll never know fulfilment and satisfaction until you hear him yourself you know him yourself you receive of him yourself you have those springs of living water within you yourself so you don't need to go to anyone or any place anymore because it's there forever nothing else will be adequate nothing else will be sufficient sooner or later beloved especially unpleasure it will let you down you and I are going to reach out to men and women blessed be his name that we're going to lift up our eyes and look on the field and stop saying four months amen sometime in the future I'll eventually catch up on he said don't say there are four months lift up your eyes and look on the field behold they're widened already to harvest there are people beloved waiting a couple who was it my sister there heaven spoke to me last night chanting beloved right opposite where they are she didn't know that they got a baby dying of leukemia she didn't know beloved that they were aching and longing to know an answer they were being preached that they would be there they were sitting right opposite many of us have walked up and down past them but we haven't even recognised them but God had motivated put something on the inside of her compelled her to look to him to give her an opportunity to speak the word life to him glory to his name don't say tomorrow hallelujah you know why many of us missed the vote because we're so easily hand trapped by the legitimate in verse 8 it says the disciples had gone away under the city to buy meat who told them to who told them to there's not one indication in this scripture beloved that Jesus suggested that they should go and buy get the food while he rested on the well anticipating what was going to happen amen it was just their own idea they weren't living in the great eternal muck they were being governed beloved by their natural appetite now there was nothing wrong with it there's nothing wrong with having your lunch amen but that's what they got and when they came back they tried to entice Jesus into their own waywardness and they said in the meantime the disciples prayed him saying master eat and he said I have eaten that meat that you know not of and that perplexed them he said my meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work it's not the first time yes it is the first time in this gospel beloved that Jesus talks about finishing his work we'll read it again in the second 17th chapter he said I finished the work and then he says it again that Calvary beloved finish Jesus was always finishing the work you know so often we think finishing it is in the future the important thing is that we finish it now and then we're in a position to go on unfinished you've started you haven't finished it you're wrapped enthusiastic you've been inspired for a moment launched forth you haven't finished it amen Jesus said my meat my life is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work keep your meat beloved where are we feeding what are we eating so often it's the legitimate thing beloved that sidetracks us not the obvious obviously bad thing but the legitimate thing the good thing as Oswald Chambers who said that the good is the enemy of the best amen don't say there are yet four months and then come at the harvest lift up thy knives and look on the field behold they're white and all ready to harvest the harvest is past the summer is ended and we're not my friends saw that as not just relating to him it did relate to him but it related to all those for whom God would hold them responsible in that day praise God if you're saved it's not enough just for you and me to be saved but there are all those out there in your village in your town in your street under the uttermost part of the earth who still need to be saved we need that great eternal must in our hearts we need to have that ability by the Holy Ghost to identify with men and women where we are