Good morning once again. I want you to turn in your Bibles to John chapter 4. We're in the middle of an account of the woman at the well and the Lord Jesus Christ. The woman at the well, she actually dims from our focus as we pick it up in verse 27 down to verse 42, and the focus is really on the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm going to read that passage beginning at verse 27, the Word of God, John chapter 4. We'll read it, and then we will pray once more. Just then his 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 town and said to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? 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. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. And many more believed because of his word." They said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Amen. May God bless His word to our hearts. Let's pray one more time. Heavenly Father, we come before you this morning and we pray that you would search us and we pray that you would know us and we pray that you would do that by your Word and by your Spirit. And if there is any wicked way in us, any way that does not accord with your Word, any way that does not accord with who you say that we are. We pray that by your grace and by the help of your Holy Spirit and His power that we would do away with such ways and that we would enter into the way everlasting. And we ask these things in Jesus' name, amen. Hospital visits are varied. They can be ones of ease, sometimes. Experienced one of those. When we were away, and we thank you for the blessing of that once again, I had a fall down the mountain. Wrenched my knee a little bit. Sonia set up the appointment at the one hospital on the island for that very same day. We went there at 2 p.m. in the afternoon. I was triaged, which was a very simple task because I was the only one there in the line. Very friendly nurse. I was then directed to the x-ray technician. That took about, I don't know, not very long. And then he showed the x-ray to me, and then I met with a very skilled doctor after that. And an hour later, I was exiting the hospital with a $55 bill in my hand. That is a hospital visit of ease. We don't experience that too much up here, do we? Then there are those kind of hospital visits that are necessary, and they are deeply invasive, deeply invasive. We have an individual here in our congregation that's going through that kind of invasiveness right now, and it is hard, but in the end, it produces, hopefully, we pray in this individual's life, life. And as I thought about that, I thought about how the word of God is like that. It is like a hospital visit, so to speak, and sometimes when you come together as God's people and you sit under the sound of the word, it's quite an easy thing. And sometimes it is quite a difficult thing. It is quite penetrating. It is quite invasive. As I thought about this text, I began to think about some other texts that fall into the category of something that's going to be perhaps quite painful for many of us to go through this morning. So here's another passage just leading up to that. 1 Corinthians 6, 19 to 20. Paul writes, you are not your own. for you were bought with a price. Therefore, glorify God with your body." You feel that? You're not your own. For you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body. I'm going to share another one before we get to our text, but do you ever forget whose you are and what your purpose is in life? I confess that I do. I slip into what I have called this particular thing into what is known as compartmentalization. I do this all the time. I think about my days like this. This time is for my family. This time is for my work. This time is for my rest and recreation. And this time is for my God. You ever do that? God reminds us in his word, he does so for our joy and his glory, that our lives are not compartmentalized at all. They are to be singular in their focus. We are to be all for God, all the time, as we wear all those different hats. We can never say something like this, that's my family time, over against that time is for God, or that's my leisure time, over against, that time is for God. We are called to be all for God all the time in every activity. We need help, don't we? We need the Spirit of the living God to remind us. Now in that vein of truth, you are not your own. Let's press in even further, another text this time from 2 Corinthians 5 verse 20, the corporate Scripture reading, one verse. We are ambassadors for Christ. God making His appeal through us. We know part and parcel of the Christian life is knowing God. We spend a lot of time in that. We have Bible studies. We have one-on-one conversations. We have Sunday school. We've got services on the Lord's Day. We have private study, all to know the living God. But we are also those who are called to make Him known. Indeed, when you come to know God in the right way, you can't help but do that anyway. It's kind of like a sponge being filled up. It just needs to be squeezed out, because as we get to know this God who has so loved us in the Lord Jesus Christ, it produces in our hearts joy, and a kind of overflowing joy whereby we want to speak to others. You think about those two verses, and they are invasive. in terms of a hospital visit, a spiritual one at that. They are the kinds of verses that write us. They remind us of whose we are and what we are to be about primarily, and this passage before us does exactly the same thing. We're in the gospel of John, and like any of the gospels of the Lord Jesus Christ, It is written that we might believe, and that by believing we might have life in His name. And we need to remember that this isn't in the first place written for non-Christians. It is written for Christians, that we might be established in our faith, that we might be reminded of what our lives are to be all about. Now when last we looked, we were in Samaria. Jesus is heading north with his disciples. He doesn't take the Transjordan route. He goes straight north through this area where Jews and this people group didn't get along so well. And he's outside of a particular town named Sychar in that This geographical reference I argued at the close of last week's sermon is not just a throwaway. That was on the shoulder of Mount Ebal where Israel once upon a time had pronounced curses if you disobeyed the law. But it's looking toward Gerizim. So here you've got Jesus proclaiming the kingdom, proclaiming He is the one who is the living water. He is the one who will bear the curse so that those who believe in Him, those who drink of Him, and live will be blessed. It was a conversation which led to the woman's conversion. A radical transformation and reorientation of life. Now she is all for God. I want to repeat something I said at the outset of last week's sermon, saying that I would pick it up this week. And you think about that activity of the Lord Jesus Christ. It's like any activity that we should be involved in. We should be really, really thinking about why we're in a certain place and why we're doing a certain thing and why God has led us there. We should kind of stand back and say, huh. This is a thing that has been orchestrated by the living God, whereby I can show the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, of course, is our trailblazer, and we need to learn of Him. He turns a mundane activity, drinking water, into a gospel conversation. He is our trailblazer. He had His priorities straight. We need to pray that the Spirit, His Spirit, would enable us to be like Him, and again see every circumstance as God-ordained, a God-ordained appointment to be entered into by His grace, by His strength, and may we declare Him. Now, as I said, the text now focuses changes the focus just a little bit and gets it off the woman for the most part, and it centers our attention on the disciples who failed to remember who they were and what their priority in life was. So notice first of all, we've got a contrast presented in verses 27 to 30. the disciples missing the point of life, the point of their calling, and the woman getting it. We read in verse 27, just then his disciples came back and they marveled that he was talking with a woman. But no one said, what do you seek, or why are you talking with her? You'll recall that the disciples went into Sychar to buy some food. Here they return and are shocked, they're surprised to find their rabbi talking with a woman. Our brother D.A. Carson comments at this point, their unvoiced surprise that he was talking to a Samaritan woman reflects the prejudices of the day. Some, though by no means all, Jewish thought held that for a rabbi to talk much with a woman, even his own wife, was at best a waste of time, and at worst a diversion from the study of Torah, and therefore potentially a great evil that could lead to Gehenna hell. Some rabbis went so far as to suggest that to provide their daughters with the knowledge of the Torah was as inappropriate as to teach them lechery, sell them into prostitution. Add to this fact that this woman was a Samaritan, and the disciples' surprise is understandable." So their surprise is unsurprising. What is surprising, however, is that their surprise did not lead them to inquire of their rabbi. That's shocking to me. Given what they had seen in their rabbi, one would think they would have asked him why he was breaking with tradition. One would think they would have reasoned. If our master is talking to a woman and a Samaritan at that, it must be a matter of eternal importance. It must be a matter of life and death. One would think that they would have inquired of her, what are you looking for from our master? And they would have inquired of him, why are you talking to her? But they did not reason or inquire, and that's surprising. They were focused on the secondary material task of getting food, and they dismissed the encounter out of hand. Their spiritual sensibilities were not what they ought to have been." Can you relate to that? What are you like when you go to the grocery store? Are you thinking about that as a God-ordained task to potentially show forth the love of the Lord Jesus Christ, praying for gospel doors to be flung open and speak His name? Our sensibilities can be so dull, and we need our God to help us. Now I said there's a contrast being presented here, and while the focus is on the disciples for the most part, we do not lose sight of the Samaritan woman. She, on the other hand, this new convert, stands in stark contrast to the disciples. She gets the point of life. The point of life is God, knowing Him, and having stooped down and having drunk this living water, the love of Jesus Christ controls her. It compels her to pick up the language of 2 Corinthians chapter 5. It compels her to tell others to do exactly what she Look at verses 28 and 29. So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? We know this story well, but these verses are really amazing to reflect upon. They call us to consider the driving force of the love of Christ in a person's life. You just think about this woman. Remember, she came out to the well in the heat of the day to avoid people. Remember her scandalous life that she had lived. Nobody goes out to a well in the heat of the day, but she did that because she didn't want to see anybody. Now a child of God, compelled by the love of Christ, she goes to those whom she avoided to tell them that they too can drink and live. Indeed, the love of Christ controls us because we have concluded this, that one has died for all, therefore all have died. And he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves, but for him who for their sake died and was raised. Most striking is her eagerness, said one writer, to bear witness before the townspeople whom she had previously had reason to avoid. End quote, and I tend to agree. So the woman left her water jar, went away into town, and said to the people, come see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? Notice two things in her going and telling. Number one, the priory that she gives. Verse 28, the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, that material activity, though necessary at a level, is not the priority. Now we shouldn't read from this in terms of application that we don't go to work tomorrow and then we just give it all to the Lord Jesus Christ and the proclamation of Him. But I think what John is doing here is to highlight the priority in it. He sets that aside and does the greater thing. But for us, we don't set aside those lesser things that God has given us to do, but in them we always remember who we are. We are not our own. We belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. We are ambassadors for Him. The second thing that we note is her gospel proclamation, or the confession she makes. It seems a little bit strange to us because we've been privy to the conversation, but she says to them, come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ? And that is not a statement of doubt, but of expectation. But it's that first part that might ring a little bit confusing. What did she mean by that, come see a man who told me all that I ever did? She meant by that, and there might be a little bit of hyperbole, a little bit of exaggeration for effect, but she meant by that primarily that Jesus had revealed to her the overarching misdirected thrust of her life. Hers had been a life of trying broken cistern after broken cistern instead of the fount of living waters. Hers had been a life of pursuing the things that are in the world, indeed the very good gifts of God, but not pursuing God Himself. And Jesus revealed that to her. She quietly attests, says Carson, how central her messy and sinful personal life was to her own thinking. And I thought about that confession. We might want to take that up, those words, as we're out there talking to people about Jesus Christ and why we love Him so much. Maybe our invitation should be something like this. Come see a man who told me all that I ever did. That really is our testimony. Jesus has laid us absolutely bare. He has revealed to us our hearts' bankrupt pursuits. He has drawn us to Him who alone can satisfy our souls, and He leads us to tell others to come and see Him." So it's a startling contrast. Now, this Samaritan woman, we would call her a newbie, right? She's a newbie. She didn't go through any kind of evangelism course, we don't read anything about that. She is a novice evangelist. And as a result of her testimony, and be encouraged by this, be encouraged by what God can do through your witness, we read in verse 30, they went out of the town and were coming to Him. It's glorious. So the disciples, they're missing the point. The woman gets it. The point of this life, our priority in all things is to know God and to make Him known. We're emphasizing the latter this morning. We see this kind of zeal and singular focus in new converts, don't we? We often are privileged to hear testimonies of God's grace in this place and see that testimony come to full bloom in the waters of baptism. We see their excitement. It's infectious, isn't it? Don't ever think when you're hearing that testimony, oh, let them live a little while, then they'll calm down a bit. Don't ever make that application as if to be dismissive of what you're seeing there. Allow it, allow that zeal and singular focus of new converts to write you, and then pray Pray something like what Keith Green wrote so long ago. Lord, please light the fire that once burned bright and clean. Replace the lamp of my first love that burns with holy fear. Amen? Point number two. The disciples missing the point and now Jesus teaching it in verses 31 to 38. So the woman's gone, verse 31 we read, meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, Rabbi, eat. Still not getting it, but they were obviously not privy to the Samaritan woman's contrasting focus, which would have happened in the town of Sychar. So the good teacher, and the one who loves his own, and he loves his own here this morning, he steps in to point them in the everlasting way and what kingdom they should seek first. And he starts with something that is revelatory. They don't recognize it right away, but it is a rebuke. He reveals them to them. He said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. Wow. I have food to eat that you do not know about. In a few moments, we'll come back and explore why Jesus likens doing the will of God to food. For the present, I want us to focus on his assessment of his disciples. In short, he says that they cannot comprehend what he and they are to be about in this life. Their spiritual perception is dull. What a sad pronouncement and indictment regarding their spiritual sensibilities. My food is, at present, beyond your comprehension. It is beyond your perception. Does the lover of our souls say that of us this morning? I have food to eat that you do not know about. You don't get it. You're not even seeing it right now. You thought of your life in some other fashion. The words are piercing. They are that invasive hospital visit. They are a surgeon's scalpel, but take heart, they are designed to be life-giving and restorative. The conversation turns back to the disciples in verse 33, and the disciples said to one another, has anyone brought him something to eat? Oh, those poor disciples, but let us not distance ourselves from them. Let us hold up the word of the living God and see it as a lens on our own hearts." They're still not thinking on that higher plane. They don't even see that Jesus is assessing them and rebuking them. They think he's still speaking about material food. They think he has said something like this, while you were shopping, boys, I came into some food from a benefactor unknown to you. That's what they're thinking that he's saying, but he's not saying that at all. And Jesus doesn't throw up His hands in exasperation. He is the one who is gentle and lowly, the one who is long-suffering. He's long-suffering with us. And He says this to them, "'My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.'" Puts us in mind of the priorities of righteous Job. I have not departed from the commandment of His lips. I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my portion of food." Job 23, verse 12. It's a statement of priority. Jesus' food, the disciples' food, our food is to do the will of God and accomplish His work. More on that in a few moments, but why does Jesus liken the will of God to food? We just passed Groundhog Day, and I like some of Bill Murray's movies. There's one of that title. There's another one called What About Bob? And he's a little bit of a crazy guy. And he basically, you know, he infiltrates this family and this cottage residence that they have, and he's sitting around table having a meal with them, and there's some corn that's being shared. and he is effusive in his praise. Oh, oh, oh, this is so good. Is this corn been hand shucked? And on and on he goes, it's almost embarrassing. And we resonate with something like that because we've sat around a table, great meal has been produced, and oh, this is just so amazing. Food not only sustains us, but food is satisfying. And that's why Jesus uses it as indicative of the will of God. To quote Carson again, he says, the creative will of God realized in obedience sustains life, yes. If in his dealings with the Samaritan woman, Jesus was performing his father's will, there was greater sustenance and satisfaction in that than in any food the disciples could offer him. Do you ever think of your ambassadorship as like the most delicious food you could ever eat? Do you ever think of speaking the Word to your brothers and sisters or speaking the gospel to the lost as fulfilling and satisfying? Jesus is going to speak to that even more. I'm not just inventing this from the text. He actually speaks to it. So more on that in a moment. Jesus says here, my food is to do the will of God and accomplish His work. What is the will of the Lord Jesus Christ in His time here on earth, those 33 years? What is it? It's to go to the cross. Jesus came to die for our sins, taking the penalty to our sins, that just penalty. What is the will of God for us? Well, as we've been focusing on, it is the proclamation of the gospel. It is more than that. It is knowing God and also making Him known. Notice that Jesus doesn't say that, that His food is to do the Father's will. He moves on to motivate His disciples, and He moves on to motivate us in that work. Two motivations here in the text. Motivation number one comes in verse 35. Let me paraphrase it. Open your eyes, says Jesus. It's harvest time, and all you need to do is go out and reap. That's your task. 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. As if to say, you know, you can read the seasons and know when harvest comes. Can you not read what season we are in in God's plan of redemption? Lift up your eyes and see. It's harvest time." These last days are the gospel day. It's harvest time. So where is the incentive in that to accomplish our Father's work? Where is it? I don't think it's primarily found in terms of urgency. that this is the day of salvation and therefore we must work while it is day, though that is given as a motivation in chapter 9 verse 4. I think the motivation here is found in terms of ease. That might surprise you. Jesus is saying the harvest is out there. The elect of God are out there. Jesus says, I'm going to redeem them. The Spirit will seal them. It is but for you to reap them. to issue the gospel summons, and they will come in. That's great motivation. Motivation number two, connected with this idea of the will of God being our food, not only sustaining, but delicious Jesus says, reapers are rewarded even now, and they share in the joy of the sower. That's my paraphrase of verses 36 to 38. Let me read those verses for you. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life so that the sower and reaper may rejoice together. Then he gives a proverbial saying, which I believe points forward to verse 38. The proverbial saying is this, the saying holds true, says Jesus, one sows and another reaps. Well, how does it hold true in this particular circumstance? I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor. Sower and reaper rejoicing together. We went through the book of Amos a little while ago in our evening messages, and it puts us in mind of that prophecy that was made of this time of the last days, the gospel day. Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him who sows the seed. The mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it. Amos 9, verse 13. Joy is the motivation here. But before we get to that, let's unpack the elements of the verses. First of all, what's the fruit that is harvested, and what is it harvested for? Carson says the crop, or the fruit, refers to people who become followers of Jesus. They're the fruit. In the first instance here, the Samaritans, and then eternal life is that for which the crop is harvested. People are being harvested for God and life with Him. Secondly, who are the reapers here, and who is the sower? Fairly easy to determine, but necessary to say. We need to remember our place in this great work. The reapers are the disciples, and by extension, every single believer in Jesus Christ. The sower is Jesus, for He says in verse 38, after giving that proverb, sowers and reapers, I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor." We see this in a parable that Jesus told, the parable of the soils. Matthew 13, verse 37, the one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world, and the good seed is the sons of the kingdom. But then Jesus says something interesting, and this might be the objection to that particular interpretation. Jesus then says, others have labored. So obviously there's more than one than Jesus. How are we to understand Jesus as the sower, as the one who has labored when He says others have labored? I find William Hendrickson helpful at this point. He first says, Christ the sower and the disciples as reapers, they rejoiced together. There's the motivation. But who were these others who had toiled, worked with much effort? At this point, many introduce Moses, the Old Testament prophets, John the Baptist. More definitely in harmony with the historical facts and with the immediate context is the influence that the Lord here refers to Himself. Himself. Think of the labor of love which He had performed here at the well, as recorded in verses 1 to 26, and the Samaritan woman whose preparatory labor is recorded in verse 29 and 39. Both Jesus and the Samaritan woman had been laboring among these Samaritans, but it was Jesus indirectly via the Samaritan woman, and she in turn directly among her neighbors. The sower predominantly is Jesus, and He working through others. There's a sense in which we can be both those categories, both sowers and reapers, but prominently, or predominantly rather, the sower is the Lord Jesus Christ. And into this labor, says Hendrickson, the disciples now entered. Those elements aside, Jesus says it is the disciples' privilege and ours to enter into that labor, to reap what we have not worked for, for God has ultimately brought it about. and to participate in the very joy of God. And that's some motivation. Probably the best way to illustrate our task of being out there and reaping, sowing secondarily and behind Jesus Christ, is what we find in the Old Testament regarding the conquest work of the Israelites when they entered into the promised land. And the Lord said of that work, looking back on it like this, might have surprised some of them who had fought so many battles. In Joshua 24, verses 11 to 13, And you went out over the Jordan and came to Jericho, and the leaders of Jericho fought against you, and also the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Girgashites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And I gave them into your hand, and I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites. It was not by your sword or by your bow, I gave you a land on which you had not labored, and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and all of orchards that you did not plant." We reap, ultimately, what we did not sow. Now, about the motivation of joy. Don't we know it to be true? I mean, we do find those instances, whether it's of our brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. You're just thinking about a situation that a brother or sister are in. You know that you have a word that you could speak, and then we just really struggle to do it. Selfishness takes over. Then as the Spirit prompts us and as we yield to that, and as we enter in, and as we share the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ with them, don't we leave those kind of meetings having felt like, you know, I've been blessed more in that than I thought I would be a blessing? Can you say your amen to that? It's like that. So hard to enter into, and it's exactly the same way when we, with fear and trepidation, go to speak the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ to the lost. We enter in and we come away from that and we know that we have been in the place of joy and blessing. What a privilege to enter into that labor. The disciples missed the point. Jesus taught it. What's going on in the world right now? What's going on in the world right now? I'm going to tell you what's going on in the world right now. You don't have to look on the internet. You don't have to buy any newspaper. You don't need to turn on the radio. What's going on in the world is Jesus Christ unstoppably is advancing His church. Amen? And we have been redeemed to play a part in that. On the plane, you get to watch movies. We had downloaded Rudy. I had never watched that movie. It's the story of a boy who really wanted to play college football at Notre Dame. Unfortunately, we weren't able to finish it, but I kind of understand that. We all want to be part of something bigger. We do this all the time. You know, if we know somebody famous, we met a fellow down there on the island and he knows the Dutch Royals. You want to be connected to something greater, but you, beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, are connected to the greatest thing that's going on on the planet. You're already connected. Just enter in by God's grace. Look to Him. Enter in. No joy to the praise of His name. Got a few verses left here. by way of conclusion in verses 39 to 42. And not surprisingly, after that kind of teaching, we've got this. bringing in the sheaves that's going on. That old hymn is in the back of my mind. We've got these scenes of reaping. Many Samaritans are believing. It's interesting the way it's positioned by the evangelist, the gospel writer John. The reaping comes about through the Samaritan woman's testimony and also Jesus' testimony, and I think that's purposeful to show us that ultimately Jesus is the story. They believed in Jesus because of what she said, verses 39 to 40. Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony. He told me all that I ever did. So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. But they also believed in Jesus because of what he said. Many more believed because of his word, and they said to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. We can say, in summary, the testimonies that bring in the harvest are one and the same. And we could put it this way, the way the Apostle puts it in 2 Corinthians 5 verse 20, God making His appeal through us. I think, too, there is an implicit call to ensure that our testimony, our gospel proclamation, always remains pure. It always remains in line with Jesus's. It's always in line with the Word of the living God. One last thing. Note the scope of this work in the people's confession. I'm not exactly certain why they looked at Jesus and they described Him in the way that they described Him. But John certainly knew. John knew that this Jesus was the Savior of people who live in the islands in the south, people who live in America, people who live in Scandinavia, people who live in Samoa, people all over the world. We know, they said, that this is indeed the Savior of the world. Maybe they spoke better than they knew. Maybe they understood from the first five books of Moses that eventually there would be a harvest among the Gentiles. Carson says it was appropriate that this title, Savior of the World, should be applied to Jesus in the context of ministry to Samaritans. representing the first cross-cultural evangelism undertaken by Jesus himself and issuing in a pattern to be followed by the church. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth." We know that this is indeed the Savior of the world. So the landscape. The demographic landscape of Sarnia-Lambton is changing. We've got people coming in from all over the world, and some of them are for Jesus. Go out there and get them. Go out there and get them. Don't worry about the changing complexities of our county and the pressure on housing and all that kind of stuff. Not primary. Jesus is ruling over all things for the church, and he's bringing them in that we might testify of him to them. Jesus said, my food is to do his will. May we say it too. May our priority be to proclaim this savior to each other, to the world, and increasingly so, looking to him for enabling grace. May we do it for our joy and his glory. Let's pray together. Oh, for grace to love you more. That's what we need. Heavenly Father, may our lives more and more reflect our ambassadorship, and may you help us to that end. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.