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Page 3.   January 15, 2012
Maybe you don’t feel clean on the inside, because your sinful flesh does not want to believe this.  But do not doubt it for even one moment.  The blood of Jesus has cleansed you from every sin you have ever committed.  Salvation is not your work, it is God’s work.   It is Jesus’ work, and he has done it all for you.  You may not feel it now, but one day before God’s throne, when Jesus comes and makes everything new and wipes away every tear from your eyes, you will feel in your heart what you only know by faith.  The blood of Jesus cleanses us from every sin and washes away every stain!
Is there any better news that this?   And isn’t it a wonderful privilege to bring that good news to those who need to hear it?    Jesus thought so.  

1. Jesus came to tell the lost they are saved

Sometimes I think we make mission work too serious and too hard.  I think telling people they are saved is just plain fun.  I think that Jesus enjoyed this work as much as we do [or maybe visa versa].   In our text, Jesus’ disciples come back from town with their lunch.  They must have seen Jesus talking with the woman and wondered why he was talking to this strange woman.   In the meanwhile, the woman had gone back into town and told the people on the street that she had found the Messiah, the Christ.   Jesus told his disciples that he had “food” which they didn’t know about.  When they wondered what “food” he meant, he said:   “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.”

What did Jesus mean?  Sometimes we use a similar expression.  If we are really intent on doing something, really enjoying what we are doing, we might say, “I don’t have time to eat right now.  I’m having too much fun.”   What was Jesus talking about?   What was the harvest that would make the sower and the reaper rejoice together?  He told his disciples to look up and see the people coming out of the town to see if what the woman said was true.   Look, the fields are “white” [Greek] for the harvest.   If you picture a ripe grain field, it is almost white like this off-white robe that I wear.   Jesus saw the robes of the people coming out of the town and he compared the people to a field of grain ready to be harvested.  

Do you hear the excitement in Jesus’ voice as he sees the people coming out from the village?   He was doing his Father’s work.   He was doing what God sent him to do, to tell the lost that they had a Savior.  What an opportunity!   As the result of what the woman told her neighbors in town [the same neighbors who gossiped about what a terrible person she was]  was that Jesus was able to spend the next two days with the people of this town and many of them, many of them became believers!

In one of our Bible classes before Christmas, I asked the class what kept people from sharing Jesus with their friends and neighbors.   Someone said, “We don’t know how.”   I don’t know if that is true.  I think that perhaps that is an excuse that our sinful nature likes to use.  It is not so much that we don’t know how as much as it is that we afraid.