The simplicity of Sychar: the joy of witnessing
“Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” (John 4:35).
The disciples were surprised that the Lord was in conversation with the woman at the well, but kept their thoughts to themselves. The Lord’s actions of grace were often judged, and even the disciples failed to understand when the Lord was engaged in seeking the lost. We must never lose sight of the grace of God. It reached us in all our need, and it should always influence our thoughts and actions towards others.
The woman left her water pot. The Spirit of God seems to use this simple act to emphasise what the woman had found in Christ. It signalled the end of an old life and the beginning of a new one. She went straight into the town and witnessed, not to the women, but to the men. The Lord did not tell her to do this directly. The new life she possessed compelled her to share what she had discovered. It was a powerful, personal and straightforward witness: “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?” Her witness was similar to that of Andrew and Philip in John 1. When she said, “Could this be the Christ?”, she was not expressing doubt but inviting others to discover the Saviour for themselves. What an effect she had: “And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’” The Samaritans urged the Lord to stay with them, and over the following two days many more people believed in Christ as the Saviour of the world. It is no surprise that, when Philip the evangelist arrives in Samaria in Acts 8, there is such an overwhelming response to the Gospel. We rarely consider the foundational work the Lord did in seeking the lost through His wonderful ministry and its connection with the harvest that the apostles reaped in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.
It was this future ministry the Lord spoke to the disciples of when they encouraged Him to have something to eat and He responds with the words, “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” The disciples often struggled to connect with the Lord’s thoughts. And He has to explain, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to finish His work.” He wanted the disciples to understand the importance of doing God’s will in evangelism, and He describes this in terms of a harvest. Despite all the rejection the Lord endured in this world, He saw a glorious harvest. He later speaks of Himself as a grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying, but as a result, bringing forth “much fruit” (John 12:24). The joy the Lord had in drawing the woman at the well to Himself was a token of the immense joy He would have in the vast company of the redeemed.
This should encourage us in our prayer for and our engagement in evangelism. The joy of God is the great theme of salvation (Luke 15). By the well, in despised Samaria, the Lord had the joy of finding another lost sheep. His shepherd’s heart has never changed. And today He still says to us, “Lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are already white for harvest!” The work of salvation is entirely His, but He encourages us to be actively and joyfully involved in sharing the “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10).
