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Scripture Reading: John 4:35-38; 21:15-17; 2 Tim. 4:2
The Gospel of John is the last of the four Gospels, and 2 Timothy is the last Epistle that Paul wrote. The last of all the books of the Bible is Revelation. Teachers and scholars of the Bible agree that the divine revelation in the holy Word is progressive, advancing from the beginning, through a process, and to a completion. In Genesis, the first book of the Bible, there are the seeds of all the spiritual matters in the Bible, but there is not the growth of the crop as the process or the harvest as the completion. It is in Revelation that we see the harvest of all the spiritual things. In the same principle, certain spiritual matters are completed only in the last of the various sets of books. For example, Matthew is not the completion of the Gospels. The completion is in John, the last Gospel. Likewise, Acts is not a book of completion. Following Acts there are all the Epistles. However, many Christians speak about the church life and Christian work mainly according to Acts. As the first book regarding the church life and Christian work, Acts has only a beginning, something in the initial stage, like a growing boy, not a mature man. If we have certain problems in our human living, it is better to go to a seventy-year-old man, not a seven-year-old boy. Only a six-year-old will go to a seven-year-old for help. Everyone always goes to someone older with more experience. This illustrates that if we have problems in the church life or in our Christian work, we need to come to the final books, such as the Gospel of John, 1 and 2 Timothy, and Revelation.
We may illustrate this principle from the writings of Paul. From the time of his earlier ministry to his later ministry, Paul’s realization changed concerning certain things. First Corinthians was one of Paul’s earlier books. In chapter 7 Paul expressed the wish that all men would be like he was and not marry, since marriage can be a distraction (vv. 7-8, 32-34). To those who wish to love the Lord and work for Him, wives are often a bothering, and husbands are not sympathetic. Paul wished that everyone would be like him with no entanglements. However, in 1 Timothy, one of his later books, he instructed Timothy to encourage widows under the age of sixty to be married (5:9, 14). This is because Paul had learned certain things from his further experience.
Many in Christianity have a wrong impression concerning the preaching of the gospel. Pentecostals speak about preaching the gospel in a Pentecostal way, and Fundamentalists speak about it in the way of revival. According to the way of revival, we first need to pray for a long time. In a training in 1951 in Manila, I pointed out to the saints that I had read that since about 1920 Christians were praying day and night for a revival. After almost thirty years, however, I had still not seen a revival. I do not trust in revivals. When I went to Indonesia a few years ago, some people told me that there had been a revival there in which the dead were raised. A certain brother who had been a missionary in Indonesia at that time witnessed this revival and entered into the inner circle of the work there. One night he saw that the leading revivalist pretended to change water into wine by exchanging the water with some wine he had prepared earlier. This deception opened the brother’s eyes, and as a result, he left that work.
In John 2:1-11 Jesus performed a genuine miracle in changing water into wine. Following this, though, verses 23 through 3:3 say, “Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed into His name when they saw the signs which He did. But Jesus Himself did not entrust Himself to them, for He knew all men, and because He did not need anyone to testify concerning man, for He Himself knew what was in man. But there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This one came to Him by night and said to Him, Rabbi, we know that You have come from God as a teacher, for no one can do these signs that You do unless God is with him. Jesus answered and said to him, Truly, truly, I say to you, Unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Although the Lord Jesus performed many miracles, He did not entrust Himself to those who were interested only in miracles. He did, however, give His time to Nicodemus. Because Nicodemus was not for miracles, Jesus could speak to him about regeneration, a matter of life. The principle is the same today. The Lord is willing to spend time even late at night to speak to only one person, not about miracles and revival but about life.
Verses 3 and 4 of chapter 4 say, “He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria.” Jesus had to pass this way because of one person who was chosen and predestinated by God. This example and that of Nicodemus show that it is worthwhile to spend time to talk to just one person. It was not convenient for the Lord to pass through that city in Samaria. Nevertheless, Jesus “had to pass” that way because the Samaritan woman had been chosen by God the Father in eternity past, and it was time for the Lord Jesus to come to her. This woman believed in Jesus, not by seeing His miracles but according to the proper way of life.
Jesus was able to come to her in a wise way. If we could have been there at that time, we would have observed a thirsty Savior and a thirsty sinner. The sinner was thirsty, and so was the Savior. When the Savior asked the sinner for water, saying, “Give Me something to drink,” she rebuked Him, saying, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, who am a Samaritan woman?” (vv. 7, 9). To say “give Me something to drink” does not seem like a gospel message, but one sentence later the Lord Jesus was able to turn to the gospel, saying, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, Give Me a drink, you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” (v. 10). The Lord Jesus preached the gospel not in the way of traditional Christianity but in a very spontaneous way. Immediately, that woman was inspired.
Since the Lord Jesus was wise, He did not preach concerning her sin. Rather, when she asked for the living water, He said to her, “Go, call your husband and come here.” Because this word concerning her husband touched her conscience, she told the Lord a lie by speaking a partial truth: “I do not have a husband” (vv. 16-17a). She did not expect that this Jewish man would know all her secrets. The Lord Jesus was kind to her and did not rebuke her, but He said to her, “You have well said, I do not have a husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly” (vv. 17b-18). This was truly an unveiling to her. She may have thought, “Who told this man all my secrets? He even knows how many husbands I have had and that the one I now have is not my husband.”
Although she was a simple person, she was clever and turned the problem about husbands to the subject of worshipping God. It is as if she said, “To speak of husbands is not nice. Let us speak concerning spiritual things, such as the right way to worship God.” Nevertheless, no matter how wise and skillful we are, when we are caught by the Lord Jesus, we cannot get away. Regardless of how much we do, we are still in His hand. She said, “Our fathers worshipped in this mountain, yet you say that in Jerusalem is the place where men must worship” (v. 20). Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is of the Jews. But an hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truthfulness, for the Father also seeks such to worship Him” (vv. 21-23).
This shows that in order to drink the living water we must first make a thorough confession of our sins and then exercise our spirit to worship God. Whenever we come to the Lord, He touches our conscience concerning our past. We can cover the things in the past from the eyes of man, but we can never cover them from God’s observation. Therefore, we need to confess, and if we do not confess, the Lord will confess for us. If we do not say, “Lord, I have had five husbands, and the one I now have is not my husband,” He will be gracious to confess this for us. He may say, “If you are not bold and have too much shame to confess, let Me do it for you.” By doing this, the Lord helped the Samaritan woman to agree with Him, confess her sins, and repent. She may have said, “You are right. I have had five husbands, and the one I now have is not mine. This is my history, my life, and my living. What is it that I need?” What she needed was to exercise her spirit to contact God the Spirit. If she would do this, she would receive the living water.
The Lord’s way of speaking was a marvelous preaching. He performed no miracle, used no eloquence, and exercised no special skill in preaching. Rather, He spoke with her in a simple way. We must all learn to speak in this way. We do not need to attend a seminary to learn doctrinal teachings. We may simply read the Gospels and learn of the Lord Jesus how to contact people. The Lord spoke in a normal way with the abundance of life. While He spoke with that woman, He was shining over her, radiating His element into her. Because of this, she left her waterpot (v. 28). She forgot about drawing the physical water because she had received the real water. She herself became a “waterpot” to contain the living water. She went away into the city and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me all that I have done” (v. 29). She also performed no miracle and had no eloquence but was simply a living testimony, testifying to the people.
While she was gone, Jesus’ disciples returned and urged Him to eat. The Lord responded, “I have food to eat that you do not know about” (v. 32). This means that the Savior was the living water to the thirsty sinner, and the sinner satisfied the hungry and thirsty Savior. The Samaritan woman drank of Jesus, and Jesus was fed by her. After speaking with one another, they became a mutual satisfaction to each other.
The proper gospel preaching is not a matter of revival or Pentecostal miracles. Rather, it is something normal. The Lord set up an example in John 3 by speaking at night to one man and in chapter 4 by caring for one immoral woman. This was Jesus’ proper preaching of the gospel. Many today are more spiritual than the Lord Jesus was. These two chapters of John do not speak about praying, but many today tell us that we must first pray and fast for a revival to suddenly come. The Lord Jesus did not do this. It is true that Acts mentions the prayer of the church, but as we have pointed out, Acts is a book of beginnings, not of completion. John, on the contrary, is the final book among the Gospels. A final word means more than a beginning word, and in the Bible the final word is not in the first books but in the last books, such as John. According to the Gospel of John, the final word is that the Lord has no confidence in miracles. His interest is in life, regeneration, and the living water. In John 3 and 4 there are no miracles, but there are strength, power, and the riches of the inner life. We must all be impressed by the Lord as the example of the proper preaching of the gospel and not of performing miracles. In chapter 2 He performed a miracle, but He would not entrust Himself to those who were interested in miracles. After this, He immediately set forth the example of how to minister life to others by opening the door to a high-class man to be regenerated with the divine, eternal life and by helping a low-class woman to drink the living water. These are the Lord’s examples for us. Today we should all take care of the gospel in such a way.
The sequence of the writing in the Bible is truly meaningful. While the Samaritan woman went away to testify, Jesus’ disciples came to care for His hunger. At that point, however, He began to care for them by speaking to them about reaping the harvest. He told them, “Do you not say that there are yet four months and then the harvest comes? Behold, I tell you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit unto eternal life, in order that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true, One sows and another reaps. I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor” (John 4:35-38). The sowing of the field of Samaria began with Moses. The Samaritans were descendants of a mixture of the Jewish people with others who had settled in that region. Around 700 B.C., the Assyrians captured Samaria and brought people from Babylon and other heathen countries to the cities of Samaria (2 Kings 17:6, 24). From that time, because the Samaritans became a people of mixed heathen and Jewish blood, they were never recognized by the Jews as being part of the Jewish people. However, history shows that the Samaritans had the Pentateuch (the five books of Moses) and worshipped God according to that part of the Old Testament. It was in this way that the seed was sown in the field of Samaria. At the least, they knew some of the things concerning God.
The Lord’s word concerning worshipping God the Father in spirit and truthfulness is difficult for many to understand. The Samaritan woman, however, had a basis to understand it. In the ancient time, the people worshipped God with sacrifices and offerings according to the law of Moses. The Samaritans went to the mountain in Samaria to worship, and the Jews went up to Jerusalem to worship. The Lord Jesus told the woman, “Woman, believe Me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know, for salvation is of the Jews. But an hour is coming, and it is now, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truthfulness, for the Father also seeks such to worship Him” (John 4:21-23). The Lord seemed to be saying, “The true worship of God is not in a place but in your spirit and not with offerings but in truthfulness. The offerings were a shadow, but I am the reality. Now you need to worship God in your spirit and with Me as the reality of all the offerings.” The Lord’s word indicates that the Samaritans were not heathens. They had heard a certain amount of the truth because the gospel had been preached to them in part. This means that the seed had been sown among them. This is why Jesus told His disciples that others had already sown and that now the field was ripe for harvest.
The proper preaching of the gospel is not a matter of revival or of Pentecostal miracles. It is something normal under God’s sovereignty. We can apply this principle to our situation today. Almost everyone in the United States has heard the gospel to a certain extent. In this sense, we do not need to sow the seed. The seed was sown over the previous centuries. Now we need to do a normal job of going out to reap. Before the Lord Jesus passed through Samaria to gain that woman, He did not tell His disciples, “There are some persons here selected and predestinated by My Father; thus, I am going to preach the gospel. Let us go together in coordination. As I preach, you must pray.” The Lord Jesus was not this “religious.” The Bible simply says, “He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria” (vv. 3-4). He did not announce or promote what He was doing, and He did not even ask anyone to pray. He only made a short trip, and on the way He preached. In this sense, He was not like a traditional evangelist. He simply ministered life to people, not sowing the seed but reaping the harvest. In chapter 3 He reaped one man, and in chapter 4 He reaped one woman.
We must all be burdened to go to the Lord and be built up in this kind of life. We do not need to pray and fast for a revival. Rather, we all need to see what the proper, normal gospel is. It is that which the Lord Jesus carried out. He spent time to gain one man and spent some more time to gain one woman. He reaped not in large numbers but one by one. Moreover, He did not promote His preaching of the gospel and ask people to pray for a special activity. Rather, He simply lived the life of the gospel. Wherever He went, the gospel was His living. May we have the genuine recovery of the preaching of the gospel in the proper church life. After reading church history, I have no confidence in so-called “revivals.” We should take the Lord Jesus as our example to be interested in imparting life and in helping others to be reborn and to drink the living water. This is the normal, daily preaching according to life, not according to miracles. This is what we need.
The Lord Jesus sovereignly and wisely used the illustration of a harvest to portray the proper preaching of the gospel. A harvest cannot be prepared overnight. A harvest comes about through tilling the ground, sowing, watering, and caring for the crop for a certain amount of time. First, the ground should be tilled and the seed sown. After this, it should be watered and cared for, and finally the harvest will come. This is a matter not of miracles but of a process in life. It is not right to expect a great revival that suddenly brings in a thousand people. We should awake from this kind of dream, realize what the proper gospel life is, and live it out in the church. Wherever we are, the gospel is with us, because it is our life. Without the living of the gospel, the church life is empty. We must all learn the example of the Lord Jesus.
Paul told Timothy, “Proclaim the word; be ready in season and out of season; convict, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and teaching” (2 Tim. 4:2). We should not say that it is winter and that we need to wait for spring to sow the seed. Rather, we are peculiar farmers; to us every day is for sowing the seed and for reaping the harvest. “In season” is when we have the opportunity, and “out of season” is when we do not have an opportunity. Whether or not we have the opportunity, we need to be ready. To “be ready” means being urgent, attentive, and on the alert. We can compare this kind of readiness to instant tea or coffee. Whenever we need some tea or coffee, it can be ready instantly. We need to be “instant” preachers, ready without need of further preparation. We should be ready at any time and in any place. We are ready at the supermarket, the bus station, the office, and the classroom. We must not say that we are not ready or that there are no opportunities. Every occasion — spring, summer, fall, and winter — is the time for us to be ready. This is not the religious way of preaching. This is the proper Christian living. There is no other way to take. We need to have this kind of gospel living. We should not say that this is not the right place, the right time, or the right person for the gospel. Every place is the right place, every time is the right time, and every person is the right person. We must be instant, ready, urgent, and attentive in season and out of season.
In the two Epistles to Timothy there are no miracles. If we have miracles, then we do not need to be ready in season and out of season. We can simply pray for three nights, and something will come down from heaven. However, the gospel is not that way. Many Christians have prayed in a superstitious way, expecting a great revival to come, but the result has been poor. If, on the contrary, Christians will have a normal living of the gospel, it will be sufficient for each one to bring only one person to the Lord each year. Then within twenty-five years the whole world will be evangelized. Even in our own locality, if we all bear one fruit in a year, our numbers will double until the whole city will be evangelized. This is much greater than the biggest revival.
The subtlety of the enemy causes us to be too farsighted, looking to the future while neglecting the present. We do not need to look to tomorrow, and there is no need to pray for three years for a great revival to come. We should simply live for today and take care of one “Nicodemus.” Many of us have been in Christianity for many years, and until today we are still under the influence of its traditional concepts, understanding, and teaching. We must be rid of all these concepts. We should care only for today, not for tomorrow. Perhaps this evening we will meet one of our relatives. Then we should spend some time to take care of him. This is a normal, daily gospel living, not a movement or special activity. The Lord Jesus went to Samaria in a very normal way and waited at Jacob’s well for someone to draw water. Then He asked her for water, not in the way of preaching or of a movement but as part of His normal daily living. This daily living was His gospel preaching. Because He was living in this way, God sent the right people to Him, and He brought people to God. If we would all live in this way, God will send His chosen ones to us. Then every year we will reap fruit. However, because we have been influenced by the wrong concept, we have not borne fruit in a normal way. Our time has been wasted in vain expectations, and we have not lived out our duty. If we have the proper living, day by day and one by one people will be brought to the Lord and into the church life. This is the proper preaching of the gospel.
John 4 speaks concerning reaping the harvest, John 15 concerning bearing fruit, and John 21 concerning feeding the lambs (vv. 15-17). No one can feed a lamb once for all in a miraculous way. If we try to do this, we will kill the lambs. Rather, we need to feed them daily, several times a day, just as mothers feed their children meal after meal. We need to turn from the miraculous concept to the life concept. The Gospel of John is a book on life. Reaping a harvest, bearing fruit, and feeding lambs are all processes of life. These are all related to a daily living in the way of life, not a mere work, activity, or movement in a miraculous, religious way. If we receive the Lord’s mercy and enjoy His grace, we will all be built up in this life, and we will bear fruit and even double each year in a normal way. Then in less than ten years the entire city we live in can be converted. This instant and constant way is solid, rich, and prevailing. This must be our living day and night. By living this way and being such persons, we will constantly enjoy the Lord’s presence, supply, and all the riches of the life of Christ. We will have much to minister to the saints and much with which to function. This will enrich and uplift our meetings, and it will make us living and joyful.
A family that has only the older generation with no children is not a joyful one. There is no doubt that to care for children is a bother. Because my grandchildren are much trouble, they can stay with me for only short periods of time. Nevertheless, I love them all. How poor it would be if at my age I had no children or grandchildren! My highest joy, however, is all the dear saints. We are a big family with all ages. Even a few new ones added to the church will make the meetings new, fresh, uplifted, and enriched. If the “older generation” of saints are the only ones who meet all year round, we will all be disappointed, but if every Lord’s Day we have several new ones, our spirit will be uplifted. To bear fruit in this way is the normal living of the church life. We must all be built up in the living of the gospel.
