John chapter 4 and verse number 34 and 35. Jesus saith 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 harvest. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields, for they are white, all ready to harvest. We'd like to think for a few moments on the subject, time to lift up. Did you notice there the words, lift up? The Lord Jesus here, as you know very well, John 4, has been talking to this Samaritan woman, and He has led her to salvation. And she goes into the city to tell everybody about the Lord Jesus Christ, and they come out to Him to see and to hear for themselves. That's the background for these verses. And Jesus is talking to his disciples here when he says to them, lift up your eyes now and look on the field, they're white already to harvest. He's talking about people. Lift up your eyes and see all these lost people who've come out of the city to see me and to hear me. Behold all these people, they're ready to be harvested like a harvest field. They're white already to harvest, he says. 36, And he that reapeth receiveth wages, and gathereth fruit unto life eternal, that both he that soweth and he that reapeth may rejoice together. Many times the Bible likens witnessing to sowing and reaping. That makes it much easier for us to understand. You can't reap if you don't sow. And there's a period of time between the sowing and the reaping. And there's the joy of the reaping. So there are many other parallels and I think there can be no greater parallel to witnessing than sowing and reaping. Sometimes we sow and sometimes we reap. I mentioned not many weeks ago about the fellow who did the sowing and I got to come along behind him and do the reaping and then 20 some years later we met and found out what had actually happened. So it's never in vain. You may put a gospel tract in somebody's hand and they may throw it up on the shelf. They may stick it in a coat pocket. We've met people who took tracts and just laid them down on the table and didn't pick them up for five years. I'm thinking of a man in particular. And then picked up that gospel tract and read it and got saved. So you've got to be patient. You've got to be prayerful. You're a little part, God has the big part, and we have the little part. But I just want to say a few simple things from this passage. Number one, we need to lift up our eyes and see. I'm afraid sometimes we're almost invisible as far as influence is concerned, and sometimes we're almost blind, spiritually that is, as far as seeing the harvest. Sometimes we act like there's nothing to do when we forget that we're living in a world of six plus billion people, and most of them are not saved. Even our own beloved nation is far from evangelized. So we need to lift up our eyes and see the harvest. Lost people are everywhere, but we've got our eyes somewhere else. We're not seeing the harvest. were preoccupied somehow. It's time we see people as Jesus saw them, and He saw beyond what they were, and He saw what they could be by His grace. He saw that they were of infinite and unspeakable value because they were eternal souls. And we forget that. We forget that any person in the whole world, however young or old or however Ungodly, still he's worth more than all the money in all the world. We need to see people like Jesus did. He saw individuals of infinite worth. And also I think we need to see people one-on-one. Sometimes we just see the forest and we don't really see the trees. We need to see people one-on-one. It's very hard to reach the whole world. It's very hard to go after millions of people or even hundreds, but surely we can go after one, one at a time. So I think these will all help us. These ideas will help us as we lift up our eyes and see the fields. Jesus didn't say here, look down. Most Christians are looking down. He didn't even say, look within. There's a time to look within, make sure everything's alright. But some people are always looking within. Never looking without. Never looking up or out. Never looking at the harvest fields. Always in what one preacher called a morbid introspection. Which means always looking at yourself. And if you want to be discouraged, that's all you have to do. Just keep looking at you. Amen. Say Amen. Let me get a drink of water. That's the truth. That's the problem with some people. They never got past their self. That's right. They never got past their self. Hey, you're not the only person living on this planet tonight, and I'm not either. And it's alright to take a look at you and make sure you're alright. But you also need to remember that there's work to be done and you need to do what Jesus said, lift up your eyes and look on the fields. Amen. That's what Jesus said, didn't He? Is that in your Bible? Isn't this the truth? We need to lift up our eyes and see. What do we see? You know what broke George Truitt's heart His great ministry in Fort Worth, he was just up in an office building, looking down on the streets of Dallas and saw all those hundreds and thousands of people walking by. It broke his heart. It came crushing down upon him as a load of bricks. These people are lost and they are going to hell. And God used him to reach hundreds of thousands of people. I don't think we're going to ever do much for the Lord until we really believe with all of our hearts that people are lost, they are going to hell, and it's our job to do something about it. Until we get that far, we'll never get any further. That's step one. I remember when I was in high school, I can remember standing there at the door, it was Christmas break, and I remember they were all walking out the door, And it was the last day, and I remember standing there as a 17-year-old boy, thinking, there they go. Most of them are lost in their own drugs, and it's sad, and the Lord's coming back, and they're not ready. And it broke my heart. And the Lord used me to win dozens and dozens of them to the Lord in the next five or six months because I had a broken heart. And I realized that they were going to hell, even though they were 15, 16, 17 years old. So we need to lift up our eyes. That's what Jesus said. Number two, we need to lift up our voices and pray. Pray for the Lord to convict them. Only He can do that. I have learned that no matter how eloquently your words are put together, that it takes more than that. It takes God the Holy Ghost to draw them, to will them, To show them their lostness? Sinners are already lost. They don't need to get lost. They're already lost. They just need to realize it. They need the fear of God. They need to realize how far away they are from the flames of hell. And that's why in every single service, especially on Sunday morning, we ought to pray that God would convict sinners. That they would realize that they need to be saved. Don't take that for granted. Because there are a lot of people out there who think they don't need to be saved. They think they're good as the other people are. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. They've still got to be saved. I've met people who said they'd never sinned in all their life and thought they meant it. If you're raised a Catholic, you're told that if you hadn't done anything extravagant, you know, if you hadn't committed any what they call mortal sins, then by their own definitions, there's some of them It's almost sinless. People need to be, as the old timers said, under Holy Ghost conviction. Pray that God will convict them. And pray that God will save them. That's not all we can do, but that's one thing we can do. Paul said, My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved. Romans 10 verse 1. Now Paul, did you pray for Israel? Yes. Did you also go everywhere telling them the gospel? Yes, you do both. Some people do praying and no witnessing, and some people witness and don't pray. Well, we need to do both, and one's not complete without the other. We need to lift up our voices and pray and always be praying, talking to God about men, talking to men about God, praying for ourselves that we'll have opportunity and wisdom and courage and compassion because those are rare. How many Christians do you know with wisdom? How many? How many Christians do you know with courage? How many Christians do you know with compassion? Those are rhetorical questions. They answer themselves. We all know Christians are few and far between, the real deal. Amen? Even the men that are supposed to be the leading Christians in our world are not. Half of them are phonies. So we need to pray for these things. Every Christian should pray for some lost soul by name every day and not give up until that person gets saved. Amen. When I got saved, the first thing I started doing was praying for my brother to be saved. Nobody had to tell me. I was nine years old, but nobody had to say to me, now, since you're saved, you want other people to get saved, and you pray for them and invite them to church and tell them how to be saved. Nobody had to tell me that. That comes with being saved. You want other people to get saved. And I prayed for my brother Tim every day by name until he got saved. And then I started praying for my brother Philip. By name, every day, until he got saved. We're talking about years. I can take you to the spot where he got saved. And then my sister, and I led her to the Lord one night. And then my brother, my brother Nathan. You've heard me tell the story. I thought he was old enough to get saved. He was five years old and it was bothering me he wasn't saved. I got him in the car one day, drove him around the block, witness, priest, everything to where I could do. I said, Nathan, you're five years old, you need to get saved. He said, I'm going to, but I'm not quite ready. And he got saved a few weeks after that where I was pastoring that Sunday night. You see, when you get saved, you want other people to get saved. If you don't want other people to get saved, you're not saved. Amen. Don't tell me you're saved if you don't care if other people don't get saved. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I believe you want other people to get saved. One thing you can do is you can pray, and that will give you greater compassion for them, and never give up. And I have prayed for people for 30 years before they ever got saved, but when they did, how sweet it was. Hallelujah. When my Uncle Shorty got saved, we people prayed for him. You know, more than one generation prayed for him. He called me in Ireland. He said, I just want you to know you witnessed to me all these years, and I have got saved. Now when you make a long distance call, international call, I believe you really got saved. Especially when you haven't ever been to church in your life. And it was worth it, hallelujah, we prayed all them years. and witnessed to him. He's a wonderful Christian. I remember the first time I ever witnessed to him. It was the worst gospel presentation in the history of the world. It was! I know, I heard it! I started at the end and went to the beginning. It was terrible! But I did the best I could. And that's all you can do. And that's all you can do. So just keep on praying. Number three, we need to lift up our wallets and give. Missionaries can't go if we don't give. Missionaries need our support and they deserve it too. Somebody asked this fellow years ago to draw a picture of a dead church. So he did. It was a beautiful church. Chandeliers, padded pews, lots of people, paved parking lot. Then there was a box that said, for foreign missions. And it had cobwebs all around it. He said, that's a dead church. I've been in a lot of churches. And there's a lot of churches that have no burden whatsoever for missions, for missionaries. Some of them just absolutely tell you to your face, we don't believe in that. You don't believe in missionaries? Well, how in the world are we going to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature? Mark 16 verse 15. and fulfill the Great Commission if we don't support missionaries. Don't call yourself a church if you don't support missionaries. Amen. That's not an option. That's a commandment given by Jesus Christ to His churches. So we've got it all mixed up now. You know what Paul said to the Philippians who were the most missions-minded church in the Bible? He said, everything you've given to Me and all that I've been able to accomplish through your giving and praying, God puts that on your account. When we give money and the missionary leads a hundred people to the Lord, that doesn't go on his account, that goes on our account. Because we gave and we prayed and if we didn't, he couldn't go. I know, I've been on both ends of this thing. And the Bible not only says it goes to your account, the Bible also says that what you give is unto the Lord a sweet-smelling odor. God loves it. It smells good to Him that we want the world to know about His Son. That honors Him. And He says, that smells good, that's wonderful. Go home and read, that's Philippians 4. Paul prays in a missions-minded church. So we need to lift up our wallets, and give. I sure am glad for missions. If it wasn't for missions, there wouldn't be but one church in the world and it would be in Jerusalem. Aren't you glad churches started more churches and sent out missionaries and the Gospel went from all of Israel and went up to Antioch of Syria and over to Asia Minor and on into Europe, thank God, and kept going west until it came to America? Hey, we were once a mission field. You were once the lost person on somebody's prayer list. Don't forget that. You hadn't always been saved. We must not forget the debt we owe. Last thing, we need to lift up our feet and reach our Jerusalem. When Jesus said, reach your Jerusalem in Acts 1.8, He meant do that simultaneously. You shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you, and you shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem and all Judea, Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of the earth." Jesus said, at the same time, reach your community, your city, your county, your state, your nation, and the other nations of the world. How can we do that? Number one, by being a light where we are, reaching our Jerusalem, and supporting other works, that are local, national, and international, simultaneous, all at the same time. Some people have the funny notion, well, we'll reach all of our Jerusalem and then we'll go a little bit further. Well, if that was the way it worked, then we'd never support any missionaries. That's not what he said. He said both simultaneously. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a church upon which the Son never sat upon His ministry? And there are churches, through their missions, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, there's somebody somewhere representing that church somewhere around the world preaching the gospel. What a worthy goal. We need to lift up our eyes and see, our voices and pray, our wallet and give. and our feeding go. Very few times in your life will sinners ever come to you. You're going to have to go to them. And you know what? You know who's going after sinners? Mormons. That's who. Seventh-day Adventists. Charismatics. Even the atheists are recruiting now. They're going to believe something. Did you know everybody in the world has religion? Everybody. Even if it's nothing but worshiping their self. Everybody believes in something. Everybody has a God. So if we don't reach Him, somebody will. Well, it's a duty and it's a privilege. Do you know what a big job it is to be a Christian? When I was at that military funeral a few weeks ago, it always does something to me. When those soldiers present that flag to the family, and the soldier always says these words, on behalf of the President of the United States, I want to present you with this flag. What does that mean? That means that if the President had been there, that would have been his duty. But the President couldn't be there. So he was filling in for the president. Now, when Jesus Christ says, you're my ambassadors, and as my Father sent me, so send I you, that means I can't be there, so I want you to stand in for me. I want you to do what I would do if I was there, say what I would say, go where I would go. You're filling in for me. Now you tell me that's not a big job, doing what Jesus would do if He was here. That's a bigger job than the President. We're His voice, we're His feet, we're His hands, and that's a mighty big job. I don't know what's so difficult about all this. It's never meant to be complicated. Some people think you have to have a PhD I think you just have to be saved and love the Lord and love people. It's not that complicated. Years ago, they were talking to the newly elected mayor of Chicago and the media was surprised that he had won and they asked him, what was your strategy? How did you win? We didn't think you'd win. He said, my strategy was to go out and knock on everybody's door and say, hey, I'm running for the mayor, and I'd like for you to vote for me. And he said, and that's how you won? Yeah, that's how I won. I just went out and met people, told them to vote for me. That's not hard, is it? Did you know most of the people you vote for have never knocked on your door? Don't you know what it is to stand in that booth and say, who's these people? Never heard of them. Why haven't they called me? Why haven't they been to my, you don't know them. Who are you going to invite to church this Sunday? Years ago, I was knocking on doors, and this lady said to me, she said, I've been watching you coming my way for the last 20 minutes, knocking on doors in the neighborhood. And she said, I just couldn't figure out if you was the doctor or if you was the mailman. He's going to every door. And I said, well, I'm not the doctor and I'm not the mailman, but I am a doctor too. I'm trying to diagnose people's spiritual needs and prescribe to them a biblical remedy. Did you know that's what you do when you talk to people? You try to find out what they need. Some of them are saved. Some of them are backslidden. Some of them are in the false doctrine. You're a spiritual doctor. And you are a mailman too. What does the mailman do? Delivers the mail. Does he write it all out? No, he just delivers it. When you tell people the gospel, you didn't make that up. You're just delivering the mail. You can't get mad at your mailman for bringing you a bill. He's just delivering the mail. And when you tell sinners, you need to get saved or you're going to go to hell, they can't get mad at you. You didn't write that. You're just delivering the mail. Every Christian is a spiritual doctor and a spiritual Mailman. Let's make sure we deliver the mail. These men were getting ready to set up a gospel tent. It was pouring down rain, and they were dreading everything they had to do. And the rain was slowing them down, and they wasn't even going to have time to pray when they got there, so they said, let's pray in the car as we drive. They prayed and when it came time for the driver to pray, he was praying and it was pouring down rain and he was crying and he ran a red light, accidentally. The policeman pulled him over and said, do you know what you just did? He said, I do officer, I apologize, it was pouring down rain and I was crying and I couldn't see very well and the officer said, why are you crying? Why are all you people crying in this car? He said, "'Cause this town's going to hell, and we're setting up an old gospel tent, and we want people to be saved, and our hearts are broken." And the officer said, "'Oh, that's why you run that red light. You know who got saved that night.'" Maybe we just need to get along with the Lord and say, "'Lord, melt this old cold heart of mine, Help me to open my eyes to see the need that's everywhere. I think we need to do what Jesus said and lift up our eyes and look on the fields for their wife already under harvest. God help us to do it because this generation of Christians is going to answer to God for this generation of sinners. I'm going to stop there. We'll go further next time. I invite you to come around the altar, close the service, and a word of prayer.