Looking at John chapter 4. Today we'll be reading from verse 27 to 42. Before we read God's word, let's pray together. Father, speak to us, we pray. Ignite our hearts by the power of Your word through Your Spirit. Awaken us. Lord, help us to hear Your word and be changed. In Christ's name, amen. John chapter 4, starting at verse 27. This is the account of the Samaritan woman whom Jesus met at the well. We've looked at the first 26 verses a few weeks ago. Starting in verse 27: 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.” This is the word of the Lord. God is at work. God is at work. I want you to let that sink in. The Creator of the universe, who upholds all things by the word of His power, is actively working, planning, orchestrating, moving towards a goal. Now, in any organization, there's a goal. There's something the business is aiming at. And the role of every person in that organization is to pull towards the goal. They won't all do the same thing; that would not be a very useful organization. But they will all be heading in the same direction. The same is true in a sporting environment, if you think of a sports team. In a game of basketball, each team is focused on a clear goal: get more points than the other team. Right, that's the goal of a basketball team. And that involves two sub-goals. One is score points, and the other is stop the opposition from scoring points. Some people on the team will be focused on defense, some will be focused on offense. But they're both pulling, all of them together, pulling towards the singular goal. In the story of the Samaritan woman, John and Jesus pause mid-story to tell us about God's goal, about the work that God is doing in this world, about the aim that that He's targeting, the big picture that God has in mind. We find all of this in verse 31 to 38, which, when you read the entire account of the Samaritan woman, feels like a strange interlude. You know, Jesus is is talking to the Samaritan woman, and she goes off into town, and then there's this bit where Jesus talks to His disciples about food, and then the Samaritan woman and and her townsfolk come back and the story continues. It feels a little odd, but it's actually vitally important because it's telling us about this goal, this work that God is doing, and it is the whole point of this whole story. And you find it neatly summarized there in verse 34, where Jesus says, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.” This is the point of the story of the Samaritan woman. Everything in this story has led up to this point. In the first few few verses of chapter 4, we find Jesus leaving Judea and heading to Galilee, and John reports that He had to pass through Samaria. And the reason John says that is because it's a strange thing to do. The Jews didn't like passing through Samaria. They they rarely, if ever, did it. They would go around Samaria, but Jesus had to go through Samaria. Why? Because He came to do the will of His Father and to accomplish His work. Jesus then starts a conversation with a Samaritan woman, once again, something that is odd. You don't do this. Jewish men don't talk to women in public—I think I read not even their wives—and let alone Samaritan women, let alone adulterous Samaritan women. You don't do this. And why does Jesus talk to her? Well, on the first part of his conversation, it seems like He's just talking to her because He's thirsty, but as soon as you keep reading a little bit, you realize, oh no, Jesus is talking to her because He wants to offer her living water. He doesn't even end up getting a drink in this whole story. He was too concerned about the will of His Father and accomplishing His work. This woman then goes off into town to tell others about Jesus, and the disciples come back wondering why Jesus is talking to a Samaritan woman. In verse 30, just before this little interlude, we see the entire town coming out to meet Him. Meanwhile—and I love that word—meanwhile, verse 31, His disciples are concerned with what? Food. As what where have they been this whole time? They've been off in the village trying to find food. They come back to Jesus, they're like, “Hey, Jesus, You should eat.” That's all they think about. And even when Jesus responds to them and says, “Nah, I'm not hungry right now, like I've got food to eat you don't know about,” they are still thinking about food. Oh, where where'd you get a sandwich from? Who gave Him that? Jesus's disciples are focused on their food, but Jesus is not worried about food, is He? He is laser-focused on accomplishing His Father's work. This is why John places the interlude in the story. We need to understand why in a story that seems to be all about drinking and eating, Jesus doesn't drink or eat at all. We need to understand why He's happy to go hungry while His disciples are busy hunting up lunch. We need to understand why He's happy to go thirsty after a long journey. The reason is Jesus knows the goal. Jesus knows the work that He's about. He's totally aligned with His Father's aim, His Father's purposes. Think about it this way. No basketball player stops mid-play to grab a drink. You know, halfway through a layup, “Oh, hang on guys, I need a drink. I'm thirsty.” It doesn't happen, right? You might be thirsty, but you don't stop because the play is still in play. Any good worker knows this experience. Have you have you ever been so engrossed in your work that the hours tick by, gets to 4 o'clock and you think, “Oh, I haven't had lunch yet.” Done that? Yeah? Often? Common experience? Yeah. We find Jesus like this all the way through the gospels. He's not concerned with the same sorts of things as those around Him. His mind is fixed on His Father's work. He seems to see a a layer of priorities that no one else is picking up on. And that verse, verse 34, which is well worth memorizing and meditating on, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work,” encourages us to ask the question, what is this work? You know, what is this goal that God has that Jesus is so focused on that He's not concerned with His drink, He's not concerned with His food. He's He's about this task. What is it? Well, we find two hints in this very passage in John 4 as to the nature of this work. Let's start in the verses that we read today. Look with me at verse 34 to 38 where Jesus says, “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.” You see what Jesus is saying to His disciples? He's saying, “You guys know what it is to be concerned about food. You are watching the crops, and you're tracking their progress. You know that today there's four months to go until it's harvest time. And you you do this so that you'll be able to harvest at the right time. Throughout the year,” He's saying, “the crops consume your thoughts. You sow in season, you watch the crops grow, and when the harvest comes, you all get busy bringing in the grain. You don't stop to eat during harvest. Any farmer knows harvest is long hours, no breaks. Why? Because you the goal of the entire agricultural process is to get that grain in.” “Can't you see,” Jesus says, “there's a greater harvest?” You can picture it, right? He's saying, look at these fields, and what's coming across the fields to Him? All the people. We just heard about them coming in verse 30. They went out of the town and were coming to Him. And then in verse 39, we find them right there with Him. As Jesus is saying this, there's people marching across the fields. And Jesus is saying, “Look across the fields. Do you see the entire town of Sychar coming to me? There's a harvest of souls to be gathered in. You didn't even do any work so far. You didn't sow this harvest, but can't you see that reaping the harvest is now? Can't you see that this is the whole point? This is the goal? This is what I'm here for? The physical food that consumes your mind is not the main game. For now, the harvest calls.” You see what Jesus is saying about the work? What's the work of the Father? People. People are the work of the Father. But specifically, people believing in Jesus. That's what he gets to next. That's what happens next. Jesus and His disciples after He explains this, they start reaping. The whole town of Sychar comes across the fields, and we hear of their belief in Jesus three times in the next four verses. Listen together in in verse 39 there, “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's no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we've heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.’” The work of the Father here, what is it? To see people believe in Jesus Christ, specifically, to believe in Him as the Savior of the world. Now, this aligns precisely with what Jesus says about his work elsewhere in John's gospel. He talks about work a lot, by the way, if you read through John's gospel, you'll find all sorts of references to the Father's work. But John 6:27-29, Jesus says, “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.” And then the people respond, “What must we be doing to be doing the works of God?” And Jesus says, “Believe in him whom He has sent.” This is the work of the Lord. To have people believe in him whom He has sent. But what's the point of believing? Does does God really just want more and more people to believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of the world? I don't think so. I think believing is a sub-goal. It's like the offense or the defense, right? It's a means to God's greater goal. The greater goal is to save people. Right? He wants people to believe in Jesus. Why? So that they will be saved. Right? Follow me? It's exactly what Jesus expands on in John chapter 6, just a few verses later in verse 39 and 40, he says, “This is the will of Him who sent Me.” In case you're wondering, this is the Father's will, “that I should lose nothing of all that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” You see? Belief in Jesus is a sub-goal. It's a means to an end. The end, the main goal is to give eternal life, to raise up men and women on the last day to enter into eternal life. And this eternal life, what what is it? Well, it is what it says on the bottle. It's life that lasts forever. It's life eternal. But it's also a vital life, a lively life. This is what Jesus was getting at when He was speaking to the woman, and He says that the living water He gives her will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life. You get that lively picture? This is something we all know is a deep goal and desire of the human heart. Every single person you meet has a heart that aligns with God's in in this regard. We want eternal life. We all hate the idea of death. We want to stay alive. But we don't just want continued existence, we want energized existence. Alphaville wrote their famous song, Forever Young, in 1986. You might know it from a Napoleon Dynamite, maybe? Where they ask, “Do you really want to live forever?” And the answer of the song is an obvious yes. We do want to live forever, but we don't want to grow old. “Let us die young, let us live forever.” Right? We want to be young, we don't want to get old. “I want to be forever young,” they say. And we all do. And it's because we're built for eternal life, for a lively, vital life. But eternal life is also a higher quality of life. It's it's not just eternal youth, but Jesus explains later in John's gospel, it's really neat how Jesus keeps explaining Himself. If you go to John 17, verse 3, He says, “This is eternal life.” We've heard Him say, “This is the Father's will that you would have eternal life.” And they were sitting there wondering, “What is eternal life?” And He said, “This is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.” You see, eternal life is relational. It's spiritual, that is, it's connected to the spirit, animated by the spirit of God. It's Edenic. It's harkening back to the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve enjoyed walking with God in the cool of the day. And our passage in John 4 sheds even more light on this eternal life because earlier when Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman, he said, “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” And what Jesus is doing is He's linking eternal life to living water, and He's prompting us to see that eternal life is a life of satisfaction. It's a thirst-quenching life. The longings of the human heart will be quenched in eternal life. But Jesus goes on in John 4 when He's talking to the Samaritan woman—this is where it links all of these ideas together—where He says, “The hour is coming and is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth.” And listen to this, “The Father is seeking such to worship Him.” Well, that sounds like work language, doesn't it? This is what the Father's will is. This is what He wants. He wants people to worship Him in spirit and truth, to walk with Him, to know Him, to live forever in a vibrant, lively experience of enjoyment of knowing Him. This is quite amazing if you think about it. This is this is like the the CEO of the business laying out their vision, right? This is like the the captain or the coach of the sports team saying, “This is where we're going, guys.” The God of the universe has told us His goal: to save many people from the judgment they deserve because of their sin, to deliver them from the hopelessness of death and the terror of judgment, and to bring them into eternal, vibrant life full of satisfaction, joy, and friendship with God. Which means that every single thing that has happened for the last 6,000 years has been towards this goal. And when all history is wrapped up and Jesus comes again, this will be the end of things. This will be what happens. People will walk with God in perfect union and fellowship. And God does not get distracted. God is absolutely laser-focused on this goal, and He mobilizes His people towards this end. If you're a Christian, I I want you to just stop and wrap your head around this. If you are if you know anything of what it is to know God and to walk with Him, think about all that God had to put in place to get you there. All the the who the the person who introduced you to Jesus, someone had to introduce them to Jesus. And someone and and they had to just be put in your path at a particular point in time. And they had to have the courage and the the desire and the words to say that would catch your attention at that point in time. All your upbringing, all the events that had occurred in your life up to that point had to be such that when you heard those words, they meant something to you. They resonated. And we all know what it is to to have someone say something to us, and it means nothing. But then given a change in our circumstances, they say something and it means everything. And that's just that's just one moment. That moment had to happen in their life, and the person before them, and the person before them. God orchestrated that. Why? Because He wanted you to walk with Him forever. He designed and purposed and planned and worked to bring that moment about so that you would be one of those people who would know Him. He pulled out all the stops. And that included, by the way, Jesus, sending His very Son, who came down, took on flesh, lived a perfect life, suffered and died and rose again, just so that you would be able to enter into His presence. And if you're not a believer here today, if you don't if if when I'm talking about knowing God and walking with Him, you're like, “I don't know what you're talking about,” I want you to see Jesus here in this passage, laser-focused on bringing people like you into restored relationship with God. God's heart, God's desire, God's purpose for people is to bring them into relationship with Him. That's what He wants for you. God's heart is that you would turn from your sin, repent, believe in Jesus Christ, and receive from Him forgiveness, and the promise of eternal life. Reconciliation with God and a hope that cannot be taken away. He wants you to receive freedom from the tyranny and fear of death. He wants you to have eternal life, and He planned all of creation, including the sending of His Son to suffer and die, including you all the events that led to you being here today, so that you would have this opportunity to come into His kingdom. So come. Repent, believe in Jesus Christ, and you will have life. Now, as we consider what God God's work is, what the will of the the Father is, it should be obvious that this goal, the goal of our Creator, should be the priority for all of His creatures. And Jesus pushes us in that direction as well. In in verse 34, Jesus uses quite extreme language really to illustrate just how much of a priority God's work is to Him. He says, “It's My food.” “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and accomplish His work.” Winning you satisfies Jesus. Winning you energizes Jesus. That's what He means when he He says, “My food is to do the will of the Father and accomplish His work.” In this case, He's so excited by the work of the Father that He doesn't even want to eat physical food. He's so full of energy as He's just engaged with the Samaritan woman and drawn her in to see that He is the Christ and and sent her back, or well, stirred in her a heart to go back, and now He's watching the whole town come towards Him and He's just bursting at the seams with energy because this is what He lives for. Quite literally. This is why He lives. This work drives Him forward. This was the whole of Jesus's mission. This was why He came down to accomplish this work, including the all of the activity that He did through His years of ministry, including His suffering and His dying. And you see, like I said, this language occur all through John's gospel as He comes as He talks about how He came to do the Father's work. And this all culminates in the magnificent words of Christ on the cross as He says, “It is finished.” You see? You see the build? If you read John's gospel, you'll watch it occur as He unfolds the work of His Father and how He's this is what He's come to do, and then on the cross as He dies and bears the wrath that we deserve, and He cries out, “It is finished.” He's saying, “I've done it. I've done the work that I was set out to do.” But He's not finished. What was finished was His earthly work. He took on flesh in order to make a way for people to come back to the Father, not an easy thing to achieve, by the way. Our sin, our wickedness, and the justice of God made us being restored into relationship with God near impossible. Only the sacrifice of a perfect man of infinite value could achieve that goal, and only a God-man would do. Ridiculously audacious goals, I might I say, God. He sets some pretty crazy aims out there, but he works to make it happen, even if it means taking on flesh and becoming a man and living and dying, something you would think God cannot do, but he does so that the gate would be thrown wide open. And that's what Jesus is saying when He says, “It's finished.” He's saying, “It's open now. The gate is open.” The curtain's torn. You can come back into the presence of God. I've paid for your sin. I've I've declared you righteous if you would but believe, and you can know God once more and walk with Him and be delivered from death. But there's still more work to be done to see that work achieved in the life of His people as the years go by. In chapter 21 of John, it's interesting, in the light of Jesus saying it's finished, the resurrected Jesus then charges Peter in chapter 21 to go and do stuff. He says, “Feed My sheep,” because he's saying that my people still need nurturing, teaching, encouraging, protecting, finding. You still need to go and find them. And as the resurrected Jesus leaves His disciples in Matthew chapter 28, he commands them, “Make disciples of all nations.” You see, the work still goes on. The gate is wide open, but people need to be shown the gate. Sinners must be introduced to Jesus. In some ways, this is an incredibly natural work that Jesus invites His people into. I I love how the woman is described in her evangelistic efforts. Did you catch how she evangelizes in verse 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?’” I love a couple of things about this. She leaves her water jar, it's gone, like Jesus, when she saw the beauty of the Savior of the world, she stopped worrying so much about her physical needs and she became in the Father's work, she became engaged in the Father's work just like Jesus, even though she didn't know it. Nowhere here is she told by Jesus to go and evangelize her neighbors. She's just so excited by Jesus that it's unavoidable. As soon as she realizes something of who Jesus is, she forgets everything else and goes back to town to tell everyone who she met. See how natural it is? But notice, too, how simple it is. I love what she says. “Come, meet a man.” Come meet a man. That's all she says, really. Come meet a man who had dealings with me. He told me everything I ever knew. Could he be the Christ? This ultimately is what we are called to do. This is evangelism born not from commandment or duty, although it is a commandment and a duty, but this is evangelism born out of personal engagement with Jesus. Here is a woman who's met Jesus, engaged with with Him deeply, and then evangelism for her just becomes a simple overflow of that engagement. You see, God's goal is that you would come to know Him in intimate, joyful, eternal relationship, and if you know God, if you walk with Him, if you meet Him in in His word by the power of His spirit, you will discover that the delight of His heart is to have others enter in to intimate, joyful, eternal relationship with Him, and you'll delight so much in this God who you've now been able to know and meet, you'll marvel so much at His glory and beauty that you'll join in with the desires of His heart and you'll start to invite others to come and meet Him. “Come meet a man. Come meet Jesus. Come, find a way to know God and be forgiven for your sins, to have the desires of your heart satisfied by God the way you were designed.” Here's the challenge for us. Are we pulling towards the goal of God? Have we bought into His vision, to His priorities? Are we on His team working towards His ambitions, or are we pulling in a completely different direction? Are we sitting around on the field, unconcerned with the game that God is playing? Are we twiddling our thumbs at our desks, glad we're just getting paid? Well, my soul's secure. It's all good. Doesn't matter what I do, the paycheck will come in. Or are we actively working towards God's plan for this created world that He made? As we consider this challenge, I I just want to note two more things from our passage. The first is, I want you to note the variety of God's work. When we consider God's goal for all of creation, we can easily fall into thinking that if I'm not out there doing street evangelism, then I'm not doing the work that God calls me to do. But our passage pushes us to notice an aspect of God's work that helps us think more clearly. Look at verse 36 to 38. Jesus says, “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've entered into their labor.” See what Jesus is saying? He's saying, “Some people are sowing and there's some people reaping.” Two distinct tasks with the same goal. You see? The big picture, what do we want? We want a harvest. In order to get a harvest, we need sowing and we need reaping. Both pull towards the harvest. In 1 Corinthians 3 that we read, Paul uses similar agricultural language and he says, “I planted, Apollos watered.” Paul then goes on to shift his metaphor and talks about how many laborers work to build God's temple. He laid a foundation, others built upon it. This building is a work that goes beyond evangelism and conversion. It's really pulling back to what Jesus is telling Peter in John 21 when he says, “Feed My sheep,” which is an action that assumes there is a continuous need for God's people even after they recognize that they're part of God's flock. Matthew 28 says a similar thing. He says, “Go into all the nations and make disciples, teaching them to observe all that I've commanded.” See there's making disciples, there's teaching them to observe everything. Again, multiple tasks, all with the same goal, that people would walk with God and would know Him for all of eternity. Back in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul makes the point that even as each of us engages in different activities towards this same goal, it is ultimately God's work. It is God who gives the increase. We are simply invited to participate in that work, to play a part in the work. But ultimately, it's His work. Just like on a basketball or rugby team, there's different positions, different roles. And we can't achieve the goal if everybody decides to do the same job. You can't all be on offense. It doesn't work. What do we need? We need prayers. We need street evangelists. We need people engaging with the community as they go about their businesses. We need people giving money to further the work. We need pastors and teachers to build up God's people. We need people sharing about Jesus with their neighbors, with their friends, and with their family. We need mothers and fathers discipling their children. That's part of the work. We need teachers investing in the lives of children. We need people to translate the Bible into languages that it's not yet translated into. We need missionaries to go places no one else has been. We need Bible college lecturers, letterbox droppers, people shining the light of what a redeemed life looks like through holy and useful lives, art, music, stories, businesses. Every single one of God's people, though, must be pulling towards the goal. You can do some of these activities and not pull towards the goal. What's important is not so much what God has called you to specifically on the field in the business, if you like, in this world. What's important is that you're pulling towards the goal. Whatever activity God's called you to, whatever gift He's given, whatever calling He's placed on your heart, you must have as your ultimate goal, people walking with God for eternity. Your food and drink must be to do the will of the Father and accomplish His work. The second thing I want to highlight is the urgency of this task. Jesus says, “The fields are white for harvest.” He means it's harvest time. It's ready, it's time to get out there and reap, disciples. Not time to eat, it's time to reap. This is true in the story. Jesus is quite literally saying to His disciples, “Don't worry about food right now, guys. Look, they're coming at us.” But it's also true for us now. Remember? Christ's earthly work is finished. The gate is wide open. The curtain is torn. Free and full forgiveness on offer for anyone and everyone. Just come to Jesus, and it's yours. And there is a great need. The fields are full. There are 7 billion people in this world. Every single one of them an eternal soul. And there is a limited time. When the fields are white, if you don't harvest quickly, the seeds are they're gone. People must hear about Christ in order to be saved, and they must hear before they die. Everyone who's ever born has maximum a few decades to hear about Jesus. Every single day, people pass on from this life into eternity—150,000 souls pass into eternity every single day. Two per second. Six people as I said that sentence. Two per second. Another six passing into eternity. Every single one, a soul with an eternal destiny. And Paul says to us in Romans 10, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Can you hear it? Gates wide open. “How will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they've not heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news.’” And notice, notice, there's people who go and there's people who send them. You see? He's not saying everyone get out there and go to the far reaches of the world. He's saying, “Some of you send people out there.” Some of you go. This need is urgent and it's large. There's parts of this world still today, 2,000 years after the gates were thrown wide open, where you could be born, live for 80 years, and die and never hear the name of Jesus. Can you believe that? 2,000 years. There are 3,214 people groups where fewer than one in 1,000 people know God through Jesus Christ. 3,214 people groups. Something I think it's well over a billion people. Take this room, multiply it by 10, and there'll be one person who knows Jesus in 3,214 people groups around this world. According to the Joshua Project who tracks this stuff, even in Australia, there are 41 unreached people groups. 41. Almost 2 million people in Australia fit their definitions of unreached. Take things closer to home. Stick a pin in a map in Harrington Park and draw a radius 15 kilometers around it. There are 160,000 people. Guess how many go to church every week? That's, I'm not talking about people who are walking with God. I'm talking about people who just rock up to church each week. 3.5 to 5%. 3.5 to 5% of the 160,000 people within 15 kilometers of Harrington Park go to church each week, go to a Protestant church each week. That means that out of every 25 people you meet if you go to Narellan Town Centre, out of every 25, only one of them is engaging in regular church activity in a Protestant church, let alone walking with Jesus. The vast majority of people around this world and even around us today need the living water of Jesus Christ. The work is urgent, the task is large, the goal is ambitious, bringing many sons to glory, saving sinners alive. But we go out as those who've tasted the living water and are bubbling up with the joy of all that Jesus has done and all that He has planned for us. My prayer for you and my prayer for me—I've been quite challenged by this sermon—is that I want you to be challenged. Is your life aligned with God's goal? Perhaps God is calling you to the mission field. I pray that even today, inside some of us here in this room, God would light a spark that does not go out until we reach one of those unreached people groups. Perhaps God's calling you to ministry. Perhaps God's calling you to invite a friend to church. Perhaps there's someone at your workplace who you've been meaning to talk to about Jesus. Talk to them. They need Jesus. Perhaps God's calling you to give more. Ask the Lord. Meditate on these things. Feel the call of God's glorious and ambitious work. And I want to leave you with a quote. This is from Amy Carmichael, who was a missionary to India. She writes: “The tom-toms thumped straight on all night. The darkness shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake and looked, and I saw as it seemed this: that I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes black and furiously coiled and great shadows shrouded hollows and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth. Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step. It trod air. She was over and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over. Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind, all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves falling and a tossing up of helpless arms catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly and fell without a sound. Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground and I could only call, though I strained and tried, only a whisper would come. Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals, but the intervals were too great. There were wide, unguarded gaps between, and over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned. And the green grass seemed blood red to me and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell. Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees with their backs turned towards the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes, when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them, it disturbed them, and they thought it rather a vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. “Why should you get so excited about it? You must wait for a definite call to go. You haven't finished your daisy chain yet. It really would be selfish,” they said, “to leave us to finish the work alone.” There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out, but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge. Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back, but her mother and other relations called and reminded her that furlough was due. She must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for a while, but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell like a waterfall of souls. Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf. It clung convulsively, and it called, but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over. Its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she sprang up and wanted to go, at which they reproved her, reminding her that no one is necessary anywhere. The gap would be well taken care of, they knew. And then they sang a hymn. Then through the hymn came another sound, like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was: the cry of the blood. Then thundered a voice, the voice of the Lord, and He said, ‘What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground.’ The tom-toms still beat heavily. The darkness still shuddered and shivered about me. I heard the yells of the devil dancers and the weird, wild shriek of the devil-possessed just outside the gate. What does it matter after all? It's gone on for years, it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it? God forgive us. God arouse us. Shame us out of our callousness. Shame us out of our sin.”