Across the Street, Around the World

If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to the Gospel of John and to chapter 4. I’m going to read just part of John chapter 4, and you can follow along; I’ll guide you.

“Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. And he had to pass through Samaria. So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

“[There came] a woman [of ]Samaria … to draw water. Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink.’ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?’ (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty [forever]. [And] the water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.’”

Well, we pick it up with verse 27:

“[The] disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you seek?’ or, ‘Why are you talking with her?’ So the woman left her water jar and went away into [the] town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?’ [So] they went out of the town and were coming to him.

“Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Has anyone brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.’”

We’ll stop there. I’ll leave you to read the balance as your homework. After all, you’re supposed to have homework.

Father, as we turn to the Bible, what we know not, teach us; what we have not, give us; what we are not, make us. For your Son’s sake. Amen.

John, in the book of Revelation, gives us this immense picture and this huge vision in Revelation chapter 7 of a company that no one can number that has been assembled from every tribe and nation and people and language under the sun.[1] And when we stand, as it were, before that portrait painted for us there in Revelation 7, we’re aware of at least two things: first of all, that God has ordained men and women to salvation (otherwise, there would be no company assembled); and number two, that he has ordained the means whereby men and women come to salvation and that the storyline of the Bible is the history of God putting together a people that are his very own from every place and background and context—men and women whose lives have been touched and changed by the gospel.

So in other words—when we think in terms of the vastness of it all—it is as a result of the gospel going out into all the world,[2] to the Jew first and then also to the gentile.[3] And it is absolutely imperative that we have that in our minds and, as we come to this particular passage, to realize just how important it is—as we’ve been hearing earlier this morning—that men and women are confronted with the claims of Christ and are invited to turn to Christ.

Murray, in his Collected Writings, says,

It is on the crest of the wave of divine sovereignty that the unrestricted summons comes to the labouring and [to the] heavy-laden. This is Jesus’ own witness, and it provides the direction in which our thinking on [this subject] must proceed. Any inhibition or reserve in presenting the overtures of grace should no more characterize our proclamation than it characterized the Lord’s [own] witness.[4]

Jesus, Mark tells us, stands forward after the announcement of John the Baptist to declare, “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the good news.”[5] We’re then told that the evening came, and they brought to him those who were sick with all kinds of diseases, and he healed them. Many who were oppressed by demons were set free.[6] Then Mark tells us that in the early hours of the following morning, Jesus was away and by himself in communion with his Father in prayer, sought out by his followers, who announced to him that the whole place is ablaze with what has happened the previous evening. Essentially, the inference is “Jesus, this whole mission thing is off to a terrific start, and what happened last night has built the foundation for what looks to be like a significant long-stay opportunity in this context.” And if you know your Bible, as I hope you do, you will remember that Jesus says, “Let us go to the other villages. Let us go somewhere else in order that I might preach there also, for that is why I came out—in order that I might declare the very things that the Father has given me to say.”[7] Or, as he says elsewhere, “The words that I speak are not my own, but they are the words that the Father has given me to proclaim”[8]—words which were then passed on to his followers.

Now, John wonderfully, in his Gospel, in chapter 3 and then in chapter 4, provides for us these two encounters with Jesus—first of all, an encounter with a man who was a religious professional, who had come out of a background that is not unfamiliar to some of us. And he was a religious man who desperately needed to know Jesus. He then, in chapter 4, records for us a lady who’s at the other end of the spectrum. She’s female, obviously; she’s Samaritan; and she is a moral outcast. And in doing this, he provides for us an opportunity to understand not only the ministry of Christ but also, in many ways, his methodology. Billy Graham said that the way to reach the masses is to reach them one at a time.

And it is in this context that his followers, who are not the brightest bunch, are more concerned about sandwiches than they are about salvation. It’s not unkind to say that; the record tells us that. They left him there in order that they might go and get food. That is a good thing to do. When they came back, they were still on about food. And their surprise in verse 27 that he was even talking with a woman is equal to the surprise of the woman herself, as recorded in verse 9, that he, a Jew, would speak to her, a Samaritan, and that he, a man, would speak to her, a woman.

The Exhortation

Now, it is because of this consternation on the part of disciples that Jesus is going to give to them a necessary exhortation. And that exhortation straightforwardly is “Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.” “You’re missing something here, fellows, and I need you to lift your gaze from your own preoccupations, from your own necessary considerations. You mentioned food. I have food to eat that you know not of. We can talk about that later. But for now, what I need you to do is take a look at the opportunity that is before you.”

Now, that exhortation, I suggest to you, is a necessary exhortation in every generation—in every generation: to lift up your eyes and to look on the fields. If you have been in pastoral ministry, if you’re going into pastoral ministry, if you’re serving in any context at all, you will realize that within relatively short time, it is possible for all of your evangelistic fervor, for all of your “lifeboat” mission station mentality, to be dissipated, to be depleted to the point that your local congregation becomes more like a marina in which people sail their own pleasure crafts around in, playing their own music, listening to their own tunes, and talking to each other. They never thought they would get that way, they never planned to be that, but they have become that. It is stagnant. It is no longer vibrant. It is no longer possessed of the dynamism that thrust the apostles onto the streets of Jerusalem with the story that “this Jesus Christ is alive, and we want to introduce you to him.” No, they’re preoccupied with all kinds of things—the equivalent of the disciples’ sandwiches.

Now, read church history, and what do you discover? You discover that the men and women that have impacted the church have been men and women full of the love of God—full of the love of God for those who need to know that love. We read Whitefield and the great evangelical awakenings, and we think of it in macro terms. But if you read Whitefield’s journals, what do you find? You find that this great and effective preacher had a heart that pulsated with a longing to see unbelieving people becoming the committed followers of Jesus Christ. He was not roaming this part of the nation in order that he might propound a theology. He was not roaming around, jumping off his horse, to go through the ordo salutis. He was actually proclaiming Jesus Christ. And in his journal from North Carolina, Christmas 1739, his entry reads as follows: “Oh, how it will rejoice me to hear that some poor soul this day [has been] born again. Then it would be a Christmas Day indeed!”[9] This is not just somebody with a with a big mouth and a big Bible and a big congregation. This is a man whose heart is engaged with God.

The men and women that have impacted the church have been full of the love of God for those who need to know that love.

You see, when we teach the Bible evangelistically, when we teach the Bible didactically—when we teach—the real purpose in it is not that we would be able to convey information so that people would be more knowledgeable about the passage and then give them a few practical points that they can try and take home with them in the afternoon and talk about. That’s not the primary point! The primary point in teaching the Bible is that we might have a life-shaping encounter with God—that our lives would be absolutely transformed by the very truth that we ourselves are proclaiming, and not least of all when we think of the challenge that is before us in the world.

The Encounter

Now, I have a treat for you this morning in that I have been able to ask the lady herself to come and address us. You say, “You’ve gone crazy.” No, not really. But instead of going back through this dialogue again to “He said, she said,” will you allow me to become the woman for just a moment? All right? You' have to stretch your imagination, I understand. And I’m not doing this as a ploy; I’m doing this in order to advance the ball up the field.

“It started out as a routine trip for me. I do it every day. I come to this well every day. It’s always hot. I’m always alone. It’s always sticky. It’s always a mess by the time I get back. I never see anybody—at least usually. This one caught me off guard: a stranger with a simple-enough request. But even the request itself was bizarre, because I’m a woman; he’s a man. He’s a Jew, and I’m a Samaritan. We don’t really talk to one another. He actually aroused my curiosity by suggesting that I was actually one that was in need and that he was the one who could supply the need—which seemed completely upside-down to me, because I noted that he had no way of getting down into the well; he had no mechanism with which to draw up water. Didn’t make sense. I actually said to him, ‘Are you greater than our father Jacob, who built this well?’” (What an irony that is!) “‘Are you greater than our father Jacob?’ Well, he didn’t get into it. He just let that question go by.

“But this is what he said: ‘Everyone who drinks the water from this well will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I will give them will never thirst again.’

“I said, ‘Sign me up for that! Because I hate coming here like this every single day.’ I didn’t get what he was on about.

“But you know when you sense that something is being said beyond what is being said? You know when you have that notion that there’s more to the matter than you’re actually grasping? That’s exactly what happened to me. That’s how I felt. And I was right! Because out of the blue he says to me, ‘Go and call your husband.’

“Go and call my husband? I thought to myself, ‘Which one does he want me to go and call?’ But he didn’t try and wring any of the details out. He didn’t try and dig into my dirty, messy past. In fact, it became clear that he knew it all—so much so that I said to him, ‘You must be a prophet.’ And I started into a question about where you want to go if you’re seeking God. Where do you go if you’re making a sacrifice for sin? And he actually said to me, ‘Well, it’s actually… You’ve got it upside down. It’s not about where you go to meet God. It is that God is the one who is seeking you.’

“Well, this was really getting out of my control. And so I thought I could just bring it to a close, and I said to him, ‘Well, why don’t we just wait until the Messiah comes? Because we know when the Messiah comes, you know, he’ll explain all of this.’

“And then, without so much as batting an eye, he said, ‘That’s me—the one speaking to you. I am the Messiah.’

“Speaking to me? Why would the Messiah speak to me? Doesn’t he know what a mess I am? Doesn’t he know that I’m a no-name lady in a small, little town? Doesn’t he know that my life to this point has been a broken series of failed beginnings, that my life has been marked by ‘looking for love in all the wrong places’;[10] that the reason I’m here all by myself and not with a cluster of women—as would be normal in the early part of the day or when the evening shadows have fallen—the reason that I’m here in the middle of the day by myself is because of who I am and because of what I am? Doesn’t he know that?

“Well, of course he knows it. But just then his friends came back. I never had any chance to chat with them, but apparently, they said they had something to do with Burger King or McDonald’s or whatever it was. They were completely preoccupied with something to do with sandwiches. And so I thought, ‘Well, this is my chance to get out of here.’ And so I just… In fact, I even left my waterpot. I was so, so amazingly overwhelmed by it all that I just went running back.”

That’s essentially how it would have been, right? That’s the encounter.

The Impact

John then tells us of the impact. Of the impact—the impact that was made by one solitary life, by one lady who didn’t know everything, but she did know something. And what she knew is that in some dimension, this encounter with this man was revolutionary. Her life would never be the same again.

Remember John Stott, in [Evangelism: Why and How], where he says, “Nothing seals the lips or ties the tongue like the poverty of our own spiritual experience. We say nothing because we have nothing to say.”[11] She had something to say: “I have met the Master. Won’t you come and meet him too?” That’s her story. She did not have an answer to all of their questions. She had no better answer than the man who had been born blind, remember? “Well, what is the problem here? What are you doing?” “Look, I don’t know! I know this: I used to be blind, but now I can see.”[12] And some of us have done nothing, really, in personal evangelism, because we’re waiting to read the “great book,” you know—the final story, the whatever it is, the “ten keys” to doing it. You don’t need it! You just need to know Jesus. You just need to love Jesus. And you just need to love people. And you just need to let them talk. And then you just need to give them an opportunity to hear the good news that you have to tell.

Listen, that’s just fine talking about China, and I’m good for China—and for Africa, and for everywhere! But I’m a missionary in Cleveland. If you want to come somewhere tough, you come with me, all right? Okay? You want to come and find out how it goes down? Here we go! You want to know where there’s a difference between the cults and Christianity, between genuine biblical Christianity and Roman Catholicism that holds people under their grasp? The opportunity is there. The impact is there.

And she goes back into the town, and she says to the people—and I can’t imagine how this must have gone over—but she goes back into the village, the town, and she’s shouting out, “Come and see a man! Come and see a man!” The people are going, “Are you kidding me? Of all people, she shouldn’t be shouting, ‘Come and see a man!’” And the cynics are saying to one another, “Must be number seven! She’s gone and she’s on to number seven! She’s had five husbands, she got a live-in lover, and now we’ve got to see another one. ‘Come and see a man’!”

No, but this is entirely different. “Oh, no. There is no man like this man. This is the Son of Man! This is the Savior of the world! Come and see him!” That’s what we’re saying to people: “We’d like to introduce you to Jesus. Have you ever read the Bible? Would you like to read the Bible? Have you ever read the Gospels? Do you know anything at all? We’re just going to look and see.”

And the progression in the text—which, when you do your homework, you’ll get this—is obvious. Verse 29: “Come, [and] see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” “Is this the Messiah?” Verse 30: “They went out of the town and were coming to him.” Verse 39: “Many … believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’” Verse 40: “[And so] they [urged] him to stay with them, and he stayed [for] two days.” Verse 41: “And many more believed because of his word.” And “they said to the woman, ‘It[’s] no longer because of what you [have] said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.’” That’s got to be the greatest satisfaction in engaging with an unreached people group: that you go, and you speak to them and tell them of Jesus, and eventually they say, “You know what? We’ve finally got this for ourselves. You can go somewhere else now. We’ll take it from here.”

I remember the wonderful story of being at Urbana in 1984, and there was a lady spoke there. I’m not sure who she was, but she was an OMF missionary. And she told of going—I think it was to Thailand, she and another lady. And they were there on their own in a place where there had been no missionaries. And they began to teach the Bible; they began to explain to people who Jesus is. And a couple of them had come to faith in Jesus Christ, and a little cluster had grown. And as they were teaching through the Bible and they got into the Pastoral Epistles, where Paul made it very, very clear about male headship in the church, one of the men said, “Well, then you can’t teach anymore. I must be the teacher. Because the Bible says that you shouldn’t be teaching; I should be teaching.” And she said, “You finally got it,” and passed the reins to eldership that was as God intended.[13] And they were able, then, to take their place within the context. They needed to be there when there was no one else. But as soon as the truth had dawned… They had seen. They had understood. They had believed.

And the great finale of it is in verse 42: “[And] they said to the woman, ‘… we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.” “We know he’s the Savior of the world.” Do you believe that Jesus is the Savior of the world—the only Savior of the world? Do you believe that there is salvation in no other name given under heaven among men through which salvation comes?[14] That “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have [everlasting] life”? That he “did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but … that the world [through him] might be saved”? That “whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in [God’s one and] only Son”?[15]

Well, the encounter is really clear, and the impact is straightforward. What a wonder it must have been in those two days to have Jesus stay and teach them! I’m assuming it would be akin to what happened as it’s recorded in Luke chapter 24:[16] Jesus takes them back through the Bible, shows them, for example, where it says,

Turn to me and be saved,
 all [you] ends of the earth!
 For I am God, and there is no other,[17]

—walks them through the whole storyline. E. J. Young says monotheism and true conversion and the universality of the gospel message always go together.[18] Monotheism, true conversion, and the universality of the gospel message always go together.

Now, my friends this morning, the reason we seek to ponder this is because this is actually the message that we are then entrusted with taking across the street and around the world. This is the message: that Jesus is the only Savior because Jesus is the only one who is qualified to save. And when we say these things, we need to learn to say them not only with clarity but also with kindness. So, for example, my Jewish friends, of whom I have a goodly number in Cleveland, believe that Jesus is not the Messiah. We believe that Jesus is. We cannot both be right. That Hindus believe that incarnation has happened thousands upon thousands of times and still continues to happen. As believers, we affirm that the incarnation was a unique, unrepeatable event whereby God invaded time in the person of the Son. We cannot both be right. Islam says, by virtue of its symbols, that the scales of a sinful man need to be tipped by that same sinful man in his own favor if he’s ever to be accepted finally by God. We say that we could never tip the scales in our favor but that one has come and done for us what we cannot do to provide for us what we do not deserve. And those two concepts are diametrically opposed to one another.

I have less in front of me than I have behind me, timewise. I’m thirty-two years into this ministry on the east side of Cleveland. As best I know my heart, I’m not jaded. I’m still enthusiastic. In fact, given the opportunity, I would like to start all over again. I’m jealous for you younger men and women, with all before you. I’d love to have a second go at it. But I’m concerned for you. I’m concerned that some of you are not going to fail, but you’re going to succeed at the wrong things. You’re going to invest your life in the wrong way. You’re going to use your loaves, your fish, whatever it is, and at the end of your day look back and say, “That was a bad investment.”

The Lesson

The encounter is clear, the impact is obvious, and the lesson—I’ll just point it out to you—the lesson that is given to the disciples is, as I started, a very necessary lesson.

They “said to one another, ‘Has anyone brought him something to eat?’” John is wonderful at these little ironies, isn’t he, in his Gospel? He does it all the time. And it’s so super: “I have food to eat that you do not know.” “Well, where did he get that?” “I just told you: You do not know! What are you asking for?”

What a group, incidentally! I mean, who would have… I know Jesus chose them, but they’re no good! There’s not one of them any good! I mean, frankly, the ministry of Jesus was a flop as far as the disciples are concerned—until post-Pentecost. And even post-Pentecost, they’re not exactly on their game then, as I’m going to show you just as I close.

This is the message: that Jesus is the only Savior because Jesus is the only one who is qualified to save.

And so he says to the disciples, “Listen, fellas: You’re the ones who routinely say, ‘There’s four months, and then comes the harvest.’” What he’s essentially saying to them is this: “By my coming, I have ushered in the harvest. By my coming, everything has changed. And paradoxically, sowing and reaping are going to coincide.” You’re tempted to say, “Well, we see the need, we see the opportunity, but of course it’s not the time.” Jesus says, “It’s always the time. The time is ripe for the harvest! Look, I tell you! Lift up your eyes! Lift up your eyes!” It’s like the psalmist, isn’t it? “Ye gates, lift up your heads on high, for he, the King of glory, enters in.”[19] The constant call of the Scriptures: “Lift your eyes up off yourself. Lift your eyes up off your own preoccupations, your own sorry little pathetic dreams and schemes. Lift your eyes up! People will not die for these trivialities. Lift up your eyes. Have a look!”

And, of course, all the commentators say that this is probably because you could see the headdresses of the people coming, you know, out from the city as they’d begun to leave. Well, maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. If it helps you, believe it. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t really matter. But lift up your eyes, and you’ll see.

Do you walk around with your eyes closed? I hope not. You’ll bang into lampposts! But do you walk around with the eyes of your heart opened? Do you see these young mothers in the grocery store? Do you see that person as you walk past them? Do you see the tattooed girl in Apple as someone for whom Christ died—or just wearing a red T-shirt and taking too long to answer your question? I confess: It’s so easy for that to happen. Do we really need Lennon and McCartney to teach us about compassion?

Oh, look at all the lonely people.
Where do they all come from?
Look at all these lonely people.
Where do they all belong?

Chapter 3, Nicodemus is “Father McKenzie, writing the words of a sermon that no one could hear.”[20] Chapter 4 is the woman in “Norwegian Wood”:

She told me she worked in the morning
And started to laugh;
I told her I didn’t
And [crept] off [and slept] in the bath.[21]

This is the real world! These are the people! This is our area of opportunity. Lift up your eyes! People are looking for love, looking for freedom, looking for forgiveness, looking for significance, looking for meaning, looking for kindness, looking for clarity. We live in a world that has completely lost its story.

In the introduction to a book by Benedict XVI—that is, the pope (I mention it here, just before we get to 2017)—but anyway, in the introduction to the book, by George Weigel, this is what he says: We live in

a world that … has lost its story: a world in which the progress promised by the humanisms of the past three centuries is now gravely threatened by understandings of the human person that reduce our humanity to a congeries of cosmic chemical accidents: a humanity with no intentional origin, no noble destiny, and thus no path to take through history.[22]

Essentially: “I don’t know who I am. I don’t know where I came from. I don’t know where I’m going. And I’ve had five husbands, and I’m living with a guy. And of all the things you could have said to me, you said, ‘Go call your husband’! How did you know to say that?” Maybe ’cause he was putting his finger on the issue in her life that was representative of her need. He wasn’t simply going to say, “Oh, that’s fine! You know, I’m Jesus, and go home and have a lovely afternoon.” No, no, no. He was saying to her, “Come on, now. Face up to things.”

We reap on the strength of what others have sown. We are the beneficiaries of their investment.

You have the same thing with the man let down through the roof. His friends get up and bring him and drop him down. What a hullabaloo that is! And when he finally is in position, Jesus looks at him and says, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”[23] What an anticlimax that was, huh? “Your sins are forgiven.” “What are you talking about, my sins are forgiven?” And the fellows looking through the roof are going, “What a waste of time this was! We came here for his legs, Jesus! And you want to forgive his sins?” Of course! Because the man’s real need was the forgiveness of his sins. Don’t waste your time going somewhere to do what everyone else in the world can do. Don’t use your voice to proclaim another message save this message. This is the message!

And in the nature of things, it is usual for reaping to take place after the sowing. “In the spiritual realm,” says Jesus, “it is usual that one reaps where another has sown.” That’s why I said to you what I said. You thought I didn’t have an introduction; I was just trying to think of something to say! That I went in the dining room, you know, like, “Oh, thank you for sharing that.” No, I did it purposefully. Why? Because one plants, and another waters, and only God can make things grow.[24] We reap on the strength of what others have sown. We are the beneficiaries of their investment. They gave their minds, their lives, their intellect for the sake of the gospel. And we are here today because of that investment. Would we do anything less?

Missionary hymns are passé. When is the last time you sang a missionary hymn? Exactly! Nobody knows what to do with them. Because it’s all been sideswiped as colonialism: the British Empire, the American zeal, spoiling these poor people with this dreadful way of giving them navy-blue jackets and so on. There’s no doubt we did some of that, but the passion was clear:

Facing a task unfinished
That drives us to our knees—
A need that, undiminished,
Rebukes our slothful ease—
We who proclaim to know him
Renew before his throne
The solemn pledge we owe him
To go and make him known.

We take the torch that, flaming,
Fell from the hands of those
Who gave their lives proclaiming
That Jesus died and rose;
And ours is the same ambition,
The same glad message ours;
And it is to him and to him alone
That we yield our powers.[25]

John chapter 4: “Lift up your eyes.” All the way through. Good Friday. Good Friday—they’re not sitting around on Good Friday saying, “Hey, only a couple of days till Easter Sunday!” They’re not planning a sunrise service—not those characters! No, no. The ladies make a stab at it, but the men are nowhere to be seen. I told you: They’re a bad bunch. And Jesus has told them, “It’s very important that I go away, that I send the Holy Spirit. He will finally unstop your ears and open your eyes.”[26] And so it is that that’s exactly what is about to take place. They’ve had the resurrection appearances, and now, before Jesus’ ascension, they gather together as it’s recorded for us at the end of Luke and at the beginning of Acts. Jesus is caught up out of their sight, and there are these angelic visitors, and what do they say to them? “Why do you stand looking up?”[27]

They’re going, like, “We can’t get a break at all! John chapter 4: ‘Why don’t you look up?’ Now we’re looking up. ‘Why are you looking up?’” You’ve got to be looking in the right place at the right time! You’re looking the wrong place. Because what did they ask? “Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?”[28] Their preoccupation was already wrong—understandable, but wrong. They were thinking nationally. They were thinking territorially. They hadn’t got it yet. Soon as the Spirit of God falls upon them, that’s what Jesus says. He says, “This is not a time for this kind of stuff.” He says, “What you need is this: that what I’ve promised you will happen, and then you take my message to the ends of the earth. You just wait for the promise of the Father, and then get on your way and get it done.”[29]

Well, that’s the story in every generation. Let me quote Murray, and one final thought. I like to quote John Murray. It’s not just because I’m here; I quote him all the time. We Scots have to stick together. There aren’t many of us.

This is Murray again. For those of you who are notetakers, this is a collation of page 59 and page [81] of his Collected Writings, volume 1:

The passion for missions is quenched when we lose sight of the grandeur of the evangel. …

It is a fact that many, persuaded as they rightly are of the particularism of the plan of salvation and of its various corollaries…

And we would include ourselves, I take it, in that group. They

have found it difficult to proclaim the full, free, and unrestricted overture of gospel grace. They have laboured under inhibitions arising from fear that in doing so they would impinge upon the sovereignty of God in his saving purposes and operations.

In other words, we’re frightened that if we make this appeal too clear, some of the nonelect are actually going to get converted. That’s what he’s saying. And we don’t want that on our—you know, on our watch. No, no, no, no. “The result is that, though formally assenting to the free offer, they lack freedom in the presentation of its appeal and [of its] demand.”[30]

Can I say again, as an older person to younger people, a word of caution, a word of warning? In the new, young Reformed circles that I meet everywhere I go and in which I rejoice, I’m deeply concerned that there is an absence of a sort of pulsing longing that under the sound of the opening up of the Scriptures itself, men and women like this woman, like the religious man in 3, would be brought to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

As a boy in Scotland, we had Sunday school in the morning hours. There was a little man used to come called George Stewart. He was old when I was small; he was, like, the “ancient of days” by the time I was in my teens. And he taught us songs. And one of the songs went like this:

Lord, send me. Here am I; send me.
I want to be greatly used of thee,
Across the street or across the sea;
Here am I, O Lord; send me.[31]

It’s a long time since I learned that song. I was probably seven or eight years old. I’ve never really been able to sing. But I can almost hear myself singing it. And I believe when I sang it, I meant it.

We never know what that will mean or where it will take us. If someone had said, “You know, if you sing that song and mean it, you’re going to spend thirty-two years of your life in Cleveland, Ohio,” I said, “Nah. No, I don’t think so.” But what do we know? We know that there’s no ideal place to serve God except the place he sets you down. Except the place he sets you down.

Well, I leave you to your homework. One final thought: Do you think this lady in John 4 showed up in Jerusalem on the day the sun turned black?[32] Did she stand in wonder when the man on the middle cross cried out, “Tetelestai,” “It is finished”?[33] And did she say, “I get it now. ‘He knew all the things I’d ever done, because his blood has covered everyone. O Lord, such grace to qualify me as your own!’[34] I need to hurry away from here and tell others this amazing news”—across the street, around the world.

Father, for your Word we thank you. We pray that it may find a resting place in each of our hearts—that what is of yourself may be brought home to us; that anything that is untrue or unkind, unhelpful, may be banished from our recollection. Fill us afresh, we pray, with the Holy Spirit, with a renewed love for Christ and a renewed longing to see people embraced by the immensity of his sacrifice. We commend ourselves afresh to you in Christ’s name. Amen.

---

[1] See Revelation 7:9.

[2] See Mark 16:15.

[3] See Romans 1:16.

[4] “The Atonement and the Free Offer of the Gospel,” in Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 1, The Claims of Truth (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1976), 82.

[5] Mark 1:15 (paraphrased).

[6] See Mark 1:32–34.

[7] Mark 1:37–38 (paraphrased).

[8] John 12:49; 14:10, 24 (paraphrased).

[9] George Whitefield’s Journals (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1960), 378.

[10] Bob Morrison, Patti Ryan, and Wanda Mallette, “Lookin’ for Love” (1980).

[11] John R. W. Stott, Evangelism: Why and How (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1962), 29. Paraphrased.

[12] John 9:24–25 (paraphrased).

[13] Joanne Shetler, And the Word Came with Power: How God Met and Changed a People Forever, with Patricia Purvis (Portland: Multnomah, 1992), 87.

[14] See Acts 4:12.

[15] John 3:16–18 (ESV).

[16] See Luke 24:27.

[17] Isaiah 45:22 (ESV).

[18] E. J. Young, The Book of Isaiah: The English Text, with Introduction, Exposition, and Notes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 3:216.

[19] Psalm 24:7 (paraphrased).

[20] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Eleanor Rigby” (1966). Lyrics lightly altered.

[21] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Norwegian Wood” (1965).

[22] George Weigel, foreword to Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times; A Conversation with Peter Seewald, by Benedict XVI, trans. Michael J. Miller and Adrian J. Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2010), x.

[23] Mark 2:5 (ESV). See also Matthew 9:2; Luke 5:20.

[24] See 1 Corinthians 3:6–7.

[25] Frank Houghton, “Facing a Task Unfinished” (1930). Lyrics lightly altered.

[26] John 16:7 (paraphrased).

[27] Acts 1:11 (paraphrased).

[28] Acts 1:6 (NIV).

[29] Acts 1:4, 8 (paraphrased).

[30] Murray, “Atonement,” 59, 81.

[31] Wendell P. Loveless, “Lord, Send Me” (1940). Lyrics lightly altered.

[32] See Matthew 27:45; Mark 15.33; Luke 23:44–45.

[33] John 19:30 (ESV).

[34] Kate Simmonds and Miles Simmonds, “When I Was Lost” (2001). Lyrics lightly altered.