I hope by the grace of God you leave here this morning with a clear understanding of John 4.35. I hope you get a real clear understanding. You leave and you remember it tomorrow. The goal of a preacher is this message would go so deep in a person they'd remember it the next day. God would change him. Jesus' words, say not ye that there are yet four months and then cometh harvest. A side note is never presume on God. Straight up and down, do not presume on God. Say not in four months, then cometh the harvest. The Bible is written in the present tense. Today is the day. Now is the day of salvation. Bible does not guarantee you anything about that you may be alive tomorrow. It keeps that from you and God does not reveal it. Rarely, maybe he gives some people a little bit of notice. Most of the time, he wants you to live today. I can always tell when somebody's addicted, you get with somebody and they're addicted, could be addicted to food, could be, I mean, in a way, we're all addicted to food, amen? But I'm talking about over consumption, where you kill yourself. Or maybe they're addicted to cocaine, maybe cigarettes, maybe alcohol, maybe some drug, maybe who knows what. They're addicted to pornography. I talk with all kinds of addicts. They wanna be free. You know they're an addict and there's not much hope for them when they keep talking about in the future. Tomorrow I'm gonna quit. Tomorrow I'm gonna lose weight. After the holidays, I'll go on a diet. They don't wanna quit. It's always in the future. Because you know why? They're never in the future. You and I are not in the future, we're in the present. And if you wanna quit something, you say today is the day. Today, I quit drugs. Today, I quit pornography. And you never have to live tomorrow because when tomorrow comes, it's today. And so in essence, you're always living today. And so all you have to quit your addiction is today. You don't have to quit tomorrow, you don't have to quit, yesterday is gone. You only gotta quit today. And really, anybody can do today. You can do 24 hours. You can beat it today. For four months, then comes harvest. Don't presume on God. Behold, I say unto you, lift up your eyes, look on the fields, for they are white already to harvest. Father, come this morning as only you can. come through this weak earthen vessel and teach the profound truth of the eternal things of God. In Jesus' name, amen. As Christians, we live in partnership with God. Calvinism wants to tell you that Salvation is 100% God and none you. But that is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches something very, very different than that. The Bible says we're partners with God, first of all. 2 Corinthians 6, verse one says, we then, as workers together with God, beseech you. The word workers together means cooperative help together, and actually God needs us. Believe it or not, God needs you. Last week I talked about not filling up that which is behind in the sufferings of Christ. Christ dying on the cross does the person no good if they don't hear about it, amen? So he needs us to be his hands, his feet, his voice, his presence, at work, in the restaurant, over in mission fields, wherever. He says, go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature. He needs us. God needs us. It's not fake. He's not pulling our leg. He's not putting a trick upon us. He needs us. And even more beautiful than that, He wants us. It's not willing that God, it's not willing, according to 1 Peter 3, 9, it's not willing that any should perish, but all should come under repentance. God wants us. When God came in the garden in the cool of the evening after Adam and Eve had sinned, he said, Adam, Adam, where art thou? He wanted fellowship with Adam. He missed fellowship with Adam. And that's how Christ came into the picture, the provision of his son dying on the cross, taking your sins upon him so that you wouldn't have to. So that you could be restored back into fellowship with God. Why? Because he loves you. It's hard to get my head around that. But God loves me. God loves me. God loves you. Yeah, but I can't say He doesn't know me. You know, people say He wouldn't love me if He knew me. Well, that's true human to human. But God knows everything about you and He still loves you. And for God so loved the world, you, that He gave His only begotten Son. God wants us. God needs us. were workers together with him, according to 2 Corinthians 6.1. The Bible says further that we're joint heirs with Christ. Romans 8.17, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. The word joint heirs means to participate in common. Fellow, two fellows in a ship, fellowship. to do work with God. When I go door to door, I'm working not just for God, I'm working with God. What a privilege it is to work with God, not just for God. He doesn't leave me nor forsake me. He told his disciples, he said, I'm sending you to the world, but I'm not gonna leave you and I'm not gonna forsake you. I'll be with you where two or more of you gather my name, there I am in the midst. Also, we know that according to 1 Corinthians 3 and 1 Corinthians 6, that we're partakers of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is there, and according to John 14, I think it's verse 16, never to leave us, not even in heaven. When you die, you'll not be deserted. God himself will be there with you all the way through the process of death, leaving your body and going on to be with him. It's beautiful to be saved. It's beautiful. It's beautiful to know him whom to know is life everlasting. The Bible clearly implies our partnership and our participation in the Christian life, our responsibility also for its outcome. So where you're given participation, you're also given responsibility. So because of the great privilege we have as born-again believers to be workers with God, we have a great judgment someday on how we responded to that opportunity. 2 Corinthians 7.1 says, having therefore these promises, and the promises he's speaking of are in 2 Corinthians 6.14, ooh, to think about 21, 22, maybe through 18, oh well. and through the end of the chapter. And then in chapter seven, verse one, he says, having therefore these promises, the ones we just read up there, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and the spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Now that sounds to me like that's my responsibility, that God's not gonna force that upon me, and God's not gonna preordain it to be so, or ordain it to be so. He leaves that choice volition with me. let us indicates I have authority as consequential responsibility. And I looked up, there's 39 examples of us exercising prerogative in the Bible, in the New Testament alone. 39 examples, clear examples, no wiggle room. that you have a personal responsibility to God and it's based upon your free choice, which you wanna do it or don't wanna do it. You wanna serve God this morning or don't wanna serve God, that's gonna be up to you. Someday you're gonna be judged on the responsibility of that decision. Our deeds will be judged someday, we have chosen. not that we're forced on us to do, not that we're unconsciously coerced to do, but things that we chose and have chosen to do. Romans 2.6 says it this way, who will render every man according to his deeds. I say all that because in our text, Jesus challenges us with the statement he makes. Lift up your eyes and look under the fields. May I point out three things that statement implies, three major things that statement implies. Number one, lift up your eyes, means to look up. This implies that naturally we do not have our eyes looking up. Naturally, we tend to have our eyes looking down. Do you want to know why there's so much depression in life and so much despondency among Christians? Well, here's a few reasons. The sin of over-introspection. Quit trying to overthink it. People say to me, am I saved or am I not saved? Stop that. Just trust God for it. You've done everything you know to do. You want to be saved. You cried out to God. You were willing to turn. You believed it. It's it. Claim your salvation by the grace of God through faith. Childlike faith. Quit over-introspection. Over-introspection will depress you. Does my husband love me? Doesn't he love me? You'll drive him to where he doesn't like you. The sin of self-absorption. It's all about me. There's a t-shirt, I was in Key West, For a lot of times, in fact, I lived in Key West two and a half years. And so there was this t-shirt down Main Street, Duval Street, and it said, it's all about me. I stopped in the t-shirt, I stopped in the place, we turned around, went back, stopped in, and I bought the shirt. And I preached about it from the university with that shirt. It's all about me. Because a lot of times, and especially young people, they have been taken care of, pampered, powdered, puffed up, given everything they ever thought about they needed by mom and dad, which, to be honest with you, is a good way to kill your child. They thought everybody owed them. They feel entitled. You want to be depressed? You want to be despondent? Be entitled. Be me, myself, and I. Be self-absorbed. Third thing you get depressed and despondent about is looking, down-looking, I call it, down-looking. Always looking on the negative side of everything. Oh, it'll probably get worse. Oh, it's probably gonna not work out. How about trusting God for some of that? How about saying, by the grace of God, we will? How about saying we're more than conquerors for Him that loved us? I've met people that are just down looking. Their eyes are constantly looking on the negative side of everything. Stop it. And fourthly, the sin of self-pity. Poor me. Poor me. I guess I'll just eat worms. Oh me. Nobody likes me. Everybody hates me. If you keep acting like that, it'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Stop it. I have teenagers who come into the office and say, I don't have any friends. Well, I can understand it. I don't even like you. Who would like somebody going around sucking their thumb, you know, me, myself, and I, and being self-absorbed, and really a combination of these things, over-introspective, self-absorption, looking down, self-pity. Paul Harvey, some of you know and heard of Paul Harvey years ago. He's gone. Paul Harvey gave an illustration in Alaska how they kill a wolf, how the native Alaskan folks kill wolves, sometimes, they don't always kill them this way, but it's one way to kill them. They take a sharp knife, and they put animal blood on it and freeze it. Then they re-coat it with more blood and freeze it, and re-coat the knife more with blood and freeze it. Then they stick it down in the ground, where the only thing that's shown is that blood-covered blade. The nose on a wolf is phenomenal, and a bear, by the way. They say they can smell blood two miles away. We went to Alaska. There were some automobile accidents. My wife and I, people went over the edge, down into the woods, and I noticed that the highway patrolman went down there with a shotgun. And I said, so I got to the next stop and there was a highway patrolman in the restaurant and I asked him, why did the guy go down the hill with a shotgun? He said, because, he said, if you get in an accident up here, the bears get to you before we do. He said, if you bleed, you'll be dead. Doesn't that sound, how would you like to live up in Alaska? So they put this blade down in the ground, secure it. In the night, the wolf comes up, finds by the smell of the thawing blood, you know, it begins to thaw. They find this knife and begin to lick it. And the more they lick it, the more carnivorous and more excited they get about the taste of the blood. Like some of you eating ice cream. And so they keep licking it and keep licking it and get more, you know how animals will get into something, they get in a fervor, they get in a feeding frenzy, not realizing that the blood they're beginning to taste and drink and be excited about is their own, as a knife cuts through their tongue. And the Alaskans, Paul Harvey said, the Alaskans in the morning will go out there by the knife and find a dead wolf, bled out on his own blood. That's what self-absorption will do for you. That's what me, myself, and I attitude will do for you. You'll kill yourself. That's what looking down will do for you. You'll kill yourself. Everything will be awful. Nothing will ever work out. Brother, we're children of the King. I understand the unsavory thinking that way. I get it. Because there's no hope for them. But for born again believers, lift up your eyes! Christians who eyes are looking down all the time to his own concerns, his own needs, or his own desires, he will die in the cold, empty loneliness of a wasted life. Look up. That's what Jesus is telling us, look up. Secondly, look out. The truth, he says, lift up your eyes implies to look out. to raise your eyes and look away from you. But it's up to you whether you do that or not. He's talking about our focus in life. Lift up your eyes under the fields. He says, first of all, look up. Then he says, look out. Because if you're looking under the fields, you're looking away from yourself other than the things that concern you. You're looking to the fields. If your focus in life has been on your benefit, your success, your welfare, your family, you've been looking down. It needs to be on your neighbors, your relatives, your city, your local church, your world. That's looking up. When you go out on the bus ministry and pick up boys and girls for Jesus that have no ability to bless you, They have no ability to help you. That's looking up. That's looking up on the fields. When you go door to door and spend your precious time where you could be doing anything and everything else, and you decide you're gonna go door to door to give the gospel to people, whether they slam the door, whether they don't like it, whether they take it, but once in a while, some dear soul will accept it and be saved. And we've seen that through the years. But at the very least, we're obeying God. We're looking up. We're looking out. We're looking out into the fields. Lift up our eyes, Jesus' commandment. Years ago, I heard Brother Jack Kyle sell an illustration of a woman and his church came to him and she was having a nervous breakdown. Preacher, I'm having a nervous breakdown, what can I do? Brother Howell said, go back home, start baking some cookies, and take them to the blind and to the shut-in people that we have in the church, and we'll give you a list. And she got furious. What's that got to do with me having a nervous breakdown? Stomped out of the room. He didn't see her for a while. She actually started avoiding him. When he would see her, she'd take off another direction. But one time there were two halls meet, and she couldn't avoid him, and she ran into him, and he said, hey, wait a minute. He says, I want to know what happened to that nervous breakdown. She said, well, preacher, I called it off. I just didn't have time to have it. I was too busy making cookies and giving them to people that needed it. Others, Lord, yes, others, let this my motto be, that when I live for others, I might live like thee. Let me live from day to day in such a self-forgetting way that even when I kneel to pray, my prayer might be for others. Others, Lord, yes, others, let this my motto be. Look out! Look out. Look unto the fields that are white unto harvest. Thirdly, I believe his statement implies that we're to look unto him, look unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. That's what the Bible says in Hebrews 12, verse two, looking unto Jesus. You look it up in the Greek and it says looking unto has the idea of looking up and out and away unto Jesus. It can be interpreted looking away unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Man, I need Jesus. Man, I need to look away from the junk around me. Man, I need to look away from all the depressive things that are going on in this world. I don't need to major on every bad thing that's ever happening or ever happening in this world. I need to major on the things of God. If you knew the Bible as well as you know Fox News, you'd be better off. Nothing wrong with some of the things that go on in Fox News. but you ought not to be more educated on Fox News than you are on the Word of God. Get in the Bible, make the Bible the most read book you've ever, that you will read or ever will read. Make the Bible the most read. The Bible in my life has been, I get to stand before God someday and say, Lord Jesus, the most read book in my life was the Bible. And you know what it proved to me? The Bible's true. The Bible's true. Look up, lift up your eyes under the fields for the white to harvest. They're not depressing, they're white. Stop discounting your importance. When Jesus was talking to those folks, he said, he cared about them. You lift up your eyes under the fields that are white in the harvest. People say, oh, people are gonna say whether I go or whether I don't go. That's not the Bible. That's not what the Bible says. It's possible somebody else may stop by and talk to those folks. But there are certain people that only you are gonna be able to reach. They're only gonna pay attention to what you say due to your credibility with them, due to your position with them, due to your testimony with them. And so there are a few people in their life that if they said something about Jesus, they'd pay attention. And God moves you to be one of those people for those souls. I've had it happen. I've been, I've told the story over and over again. I was checking out, now this has happened a dozen times probably in my life. I was in a hurry, I was in a line at a store checking out to get my stuff and get going, going down the road. I checked out my stuff and the Holy Spirit whispered in my ear and says, say something to the clerk, the person checking me out. And I said, have you ever argued with God? How stupid. How busy. I'm busy. Like God didn't know that? I'm busy. He or she, whatever it was, probably won't want to hear about it because she's got people behind me in line wanting to do her checkout job, and I don't want to interfere with her checkout job. And then he probably doesn't want to hear what I got to say anyway. I go through this whole thing, and I get my stuff that I bought, and I start walking out to the chair. I go through the doors, I get out in the parking lot, I'm getting going towards the truck, and the Holy Spirit gets more intense. He says, go back there and tell her about me. Give her a gospel tract, talk to her. I think, oh Lord, why me? Can't my tomorrow do it? And so I finally, here's what I've learned. Took me a while to learn this. I've learned I better obey. So I put myself in the truck and I'm mad now. Oh, I got me a little temper. I'm mad now because he's inconveniencing me. And I'm mad, so I think, okay, I'm gonna go back in there, and I'm gonna wait in line, and I'm gonna act like, I'll be like, look, she'll think I'm crazy, and I'm gonna be a fool, and I'm gonna go in there, and I'm gonna eventually give her a gospel drink and say, Jesus wants you to have this, and ask me to give it to you. I'm mad at God. And so I do it, I go back in the store, I wait in line, she kinda looks at you like, hmm. Maybe you forgot something. And I did what he told me to do. I went in there and says, I'm telling you girls, God is really after you because I didn't want to do this. And I went out to my truck and here I am back. Here's the gospel tract. I know you're busy. Take this and give it a time of read. And then, you know, say whatever the Holy Spirit will lead about coming to church. But not too much, enough to give her interest in it. Because God's doing something in her life I don't even know about. There was a time I didn't do that. One time at 18 years old, maybe I was 19. I've told the story a few times here that at 19 years old, God will never let me forget it. I worked third shift on the railroad. I was a third pin, they called it, which means that's the lowest job possible on the railroad. And I was working in the yard, switching cars, third shift, 17 below zero, miserable weather. Typical Indiana. And so, I worked all day, worked with the guys. You know you work with guys. You have a little shanty, they call it, a little shack that you all kind of go and try to get warmed up. And we got to get to know each other, work at the same shift. And he was a young guy. I never really knew him very well, but I knew he was married and had some children. I didn't know how many, but I knew he had children. I was married, had one child. And so the Holy Spirit came by. We were both walking, literally I can see it in my eyes. We're walking shoulder to shoulder. He was on my right. We were going to our vehicles, which were up there about a 50 yard walk. Our vehicles were set in the parking lot. And as we walked along the way, the Holy Spirit said, I want you to talk to him about me. I want you to talk to him about Jesus. I want you to talk to him about me. And I started my deal. Well, you know, Lord, I've just worked eight hours. I'm tired. It's early in the morning. He's tired. It's early in the morning. Tonight when I see him, when we come on the job, I think we came on the job at 7 a.m. or something like that, I forgot what it was. I'll talk to him. I'll talk to him, okay? I will talk to him tomorrow morning. Or tomorrow, actually, night, because I was going home for the morning. And he said, no, I want you to talk to him now. I said, no, I'm not gonna do it. And then the guy said something to me. He split off and went to his vehicle, and I split off and went to my vehicle. That night, he killed himself. Three kids and a wife. He killed himself. I got to work the next morning, or the next shift, or the third shift, and I said, where's so-and-so? Oh, you didn't hear? I said, no, hear what? He killed himself yesterday. The Holy Spirit came by. He said, don't you ever forget that. Don't you ever forget that. When I tell you to do something, do it. Lift up your eyes. under the fields for their white to harvest. Will you obey God this morning? Will you decide to obey God once and for all? There's no more debate about it. When visitation day comes by, when Tabassum track time, Christmas track time comes, you're not going to fight it. You're not gonna debate about it. You're gonna be a witness to your waitresses. You're gonna be a witness to the people you shop with. You're gonna be a witness to your neighbors. You're gonna be a witness to the folks that you bump into and you're gonna purposefully try to get the gospel to people before it's too late. Let's pray. Our Father, We need help. If you would like to know more about the Lord Jesus Christ, you may contact us at the church website, gospelbaptistchurch.com, or you can go to Facebook and type in Gospel Baptist Church Bonita Springs, Florida. Also, you could call the church office at 239-947-1285. Thank you and God bless.