Now just before we read the scriptures, I would like to cover the ground in your thinking of a week's activity. Many of the conventions around the world, these weeks of listening to God's Word, some people say on the Monday, things that hurt and spoil the Christian, sin and selfishness that want to reign in our lives. And so, so often the knife of God's word has to open up the inner faces and reveal the things that are hurting the health of the child of God. On Tuesday, the teaching from God's word is the wonderful remedy, how in the written Christ that by the Holy Spirit and the Holy Word of God a Christian can be kept clean in a dirty world, how the precious God of Christ cleanses from all sins, how if we fall or stumble our great advocate will restore how if we confess our sins, he is just and faithful to this. Then we move on Wednesday to the claims of the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the one who died for us to be our Savior, to give us pardon, come to possess his possession. He was no rival. He was the sovereign Lord of his blood-bought sons. No Thursday we move to the greatest work of the comfort of the Holy Spirit, who can be everything to us on our journey. The one who came on the day of Pentecost and will go on with his work until he presents the church without spot or wrinkle for the coming bridegroom hour. How he can entail us and fill us and give to us divine action and wisdom for everything. When we get to Friday, we say the Holy Service of God. As a royal, holy priesthood consecrated to God's service, we just stand before God and stretch out loud empty hands and have them filled with all the streets of Christ and set in motion as a wave offering to walk the world around. The call to serve. There's a word for Jesus. none but you to do, a corner that you can fill that nobody else can do, and to be led into that place of service and know that this is what the Lord has entrusted you with, is so vital, all the honor and the privilege of representing Jesus Christ, of being his, that worth it, of being a channel of blessing to display him in the sphere of influence where he has put Now we meet Friday, and this is our subject, and we are going to turn the two short portions of Scripture in the New Testament. Matthew four, verse eighteen. And Jesus walking by the sea of Galilee saw two brethren Simon called Peter and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers. Jesus says under them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. They straightway left their nets and followed him. Going on from thence he saw other two brethren, James, the son of Jebedee, and John, his brother, in a ship with Jebedee, their father, mending their nets, and he called them. They immediately left the ship, and their father. antology. One of those beautiful gospel pictures that we never tire of looking at. Wholesome, hard-bitten, stricken, worn and spread by the lake of Galilee, climbing into the boat with shabby, learning to handle the net, feeling the splash of the water in their face and the breeze drilled with the tug of the net as they haul in the fish. And at the end of a half day's work, perhaps coming back to be home and relaxing, good food, warm fire, comfortable days, this was life for death. The Lord lost them. Walking that lake side, he saw those wholesome men clutching their nets. And if you ever clutch the nets, you've got to learn how to do it. It's a skill job. And he saw them mending their nets. They've got jagged against the rock, and they were mending them. And another gospel says they were washing their nets, and putting them up to dry in the air. And as he watched these... killed men all of a sudden. Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they left their nets. They left their boats and became his disciples, the men who were going to be the apostles. After he had died upon the cross of Calvary and won that great gospel for a perishing world in written power, he looked into their faces, and he said, When you are infused with power after Pentecost, you will go into all the world and make disciples of all nations. And after you caught those fish, you will go out into the great stream of humanity in the deep waters of men and women. you will catch men alive for me you will make disciples for me what a commend of God now if you go through the Gospels you will see the Lord training these men again and again and again he had to teach and read each lesson sometimes he's speaking to them alone sometimes he's speaking to the crowd Sometimes he will beckon to three of them. Peter and James is gone, and he will say, Come. And they'll go into the house of Cyrus, and he will let them watch, and he raises the little girl to life. Sometimes he beckons and they come, and he leads them up to a high mountain apart, and they see him talking with his father, and then with Moses and Elias, and he's transfigured in all his cross. He led them even into the dark shadows of Gethsemane to hear his sobs and see his pride. These are the men, wholesome men, that he was going to make fissures of men. After he had met them, so would you turn to John's Gospel? Chapter four. And first, high. Then cometh Jesus to a city of Samaria, which is called Psycar near to the path of the ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Now Jacob's well was there, Jesus therefore being wearied with the journey's huff-nuff on the well, and it was about six hours. And there cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said unto her, give me to drink for his disciples, Peter, James, John, Andrew, and the rest, were gone away into the city of thy niece. Verse twenty seventh. And upon this came his disciples, Peter, James, John, Andrew, and the rest, and marveled that Jesus taught with the woman. Yet no man, none of the twelve, said, What teachest thou, or why taughtest thou with her? The woman then let her let her. went her way to the city and death for men, come see a man which told me all things that ever I did, is not this, the Christ. I'm going to ask you to keep your Bibles open at John Paul, and I'm going to ask you to try and come with me in nineteen sixty five, right into the heart of this picture, from the word of God that we will do. The Lord hasn't changed. He's the same yesterday and today and forever the unchanging Christ. The world hasn't changed. It's the same probing, expanding world of humanity at the roundabout. But the Lord pointed to when he said, go and make disciples of all nations. There are men and women like the men and women of Psychar. all around you. Just as those disciples left the nest and left the fishing boat, and just like this woman in the precious of her first love left the water. The Lord wants us to leave many a legitimate thing, so it can't be calling us to something bigger, grander, greater, Ah, more wonderful. It's our one little opportunity as Christom of serving him and representing him in a world that doesn't like him very much. Now, Christom, get hold of him. Through the never-ending ages of eternity, you are going to serve him. You will walk with him in light, you will see his face, and his servants will serve him. Through the never-ending ages of eternity, you are going to have the priceless privilege of being coerced with Christ in his eternal glory. But never. hard to say it because it speaks over my soul. Do I really believe it? Never will you be able to pick up a telephone up there and bring up a sinner and invite them to a gospel church. Never will you be able there to give out a tract with a prayer behind it. Never will you be able to face a hostile world and represent your savior and try and win them for him. Everybody loves him up there. He's only down here in this little planet that swings round the sun. It's only down here amongst the children of Adam's race, deceived by the fallen angel, Lucifer, son of the morning, Satan, that the kingdom of darkness is found in strength. It's only down here they sit in the face of the Son of God, and trample underfoot his blood, and are tearless of his clay. God says, Lucifer, and it's only down here you'll be able to serve him. and represent him in a hostile world. Your opportunities are slipping away far. And the tragedy is we are losing the opportunity. You say, how do you know? Because I know my own heart. Gain and the gain and the gain when the day is over with all its possibility and brush. you're tired out and you can only as you go to bed say Lord we're on the same old term could you give me a good night if I've grieved you and failed you during the day will you forgive me and as you search your own heart in his presence it's not some disgusting sin it's not some rank evil but again and again you have to say Lord you gave me a day And right through this day I met the butcher and the baker and the new boy. I went into the store. I said, how do you do to the mailman? I spoke to my next-door neighbor. But Lord, Lord, I missed so many opportunities. I never spoke of thee to them. I never seized the opportunities to try and love them for thee. And it's not so much the things one did, it's the things of the under, that you have to confess you want. Sometimes your heart is stirred and jolted as you see others doing what you told me. You see a man in his car, it loaded with good sounds of literature, and every time he stops to fill up his jacks, and he gives a reason why, or some good book to the man that serves. You see a dear woman, and somehow with the radiance of the Lord, you see her witnessing and catching other lies, and you feel a sense of shame, and say, Oh, I can't do this, or I don't do it. the last of the two now catch the picture it's from john's gospel it's not a synoptic gospel in order it's hard to know when it comes to place or there's a structure about this unique gospel but the vision says the word of god the son of god But I can see them coming, that little man, Jesus, and his loved disciples, the men that God has given him. And they're coming up the great highway. They must need go through Samaria, the land of the mongrel people, the mixed race, and proud, pure-bodied Jews. had no dealings with Samaritan. There was racial tension and racial feeling then. Around the world today, it's deep-bitten in people's makeup. Nothing new. Just the selfish outreach of the old natural man. I don't like a person because they're not just like me. and blossoming our world with distress and trouble. Anxias said, Constant. Well, they come to Tycha, and they come to Jacob's well. It was a deep well. And our Lord was tired. You can understand that. A virtue was going out of him. Oh, so constantly he was. letting the sick touch the hem of its garments, and every time it happened, healing came, and for a few went out and said, Who touched me? He knew. And again and again, you can see him with a teeming crowd, breaking bread for five thousand dead. How strong. He's standing and preaching those tremendous sermons, and then moving on. And tired and weary under the midday sun, he sits down on the well side and eager disciples, say, Master, we'll slip up into the city. We'll visit the butcher and the baker. We'll get some two-bone steaks and some fresh rolls. And they left it. And if you will ponder the story carefully, you will find that as they went up that road they passed someone who was coming down now these men knew life they were fools and as they saw her coming down a woman of samaria with a big stone pot on her head or shoulder men sometimes passed from up amongst themselves that they wouldn't stay in a woman's company And I wouldn't be surprised we'll be able to ask them by and by in the glory land if they didn't whisper to each other, look at this tight. And they peer to the light of the rose to let a woman pass by with her water. Not coming in the evening hour with the chattering women to talk the doings of the day in the shadows, coming under a burning sun, She had gone out and found her water pot empty. That cycle water pot that stood outside her door, that water pot that she couldn't live without from the early morning to wash her face, to make a cup of tea, to cook her food, to scrub her floor, dipping, dipping, dipping, and all too quickly it went down. And she comes under the midday sun. When the shadows lengthen, she's about other business, not tea business. She comes to the well side and she meets Jesus, and I don't know, honestly, I don't know anything quite like that interview with Jesus as an instruction for Poland. John's gospel is filled with seven, seven miracles, seven great iron titles, And there are sudden approaches of the great fissure of gold toward that woman. And her response, until at last she says, I that speak unto thee in brackets, ever! And he revealed himself, and said, I am the one who stood amongst the crowds and said, I am the living bread. I am the way. I am the good shepherd. I am the resurrection and the life. healed himself to a woman and said, I am. And she left her water pot. Just like those disciples left their nets and left their boats and left mother and father, I will make you fishers of men. She left her water pot and was gone for her own. Well, she couldn't live without that water pot. Why did you leave your home, lady? Water pot. Why did you come to the city streets and out of the gate? A water pot, isn't she? Why did you come down the dusty road to the well side? A water pot. She's left. Why did she need her walk? She's going up the road, and as she goes up the road, she passes them. Yes, you read the story. Peter, James, Tom, Andrew, the whole crowd, a big bunch of boys, and they've got their baskets full. They're feeling like you are on a Friday night when you've been for a good shot. They've got evil mistakes. They've got hot rolls. They've got everything. And they're coming down the road. And she's not past them. She's going as fast as a woman's legs can carry her. They pass the well, and they say, Master, eat. Look what we've got. He said, No, thank you. And they were surprised to be a token of a woman at all, but they said, Is anyone speaking anything that you found at all? He said, No. My need is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. He sent me into the world not to condemn it, but to save it. He sent me into the world to capture the hearts and lives of men and women in a fallen race. That I might give them spiritual life, a fountain of living waters that will spring out within their hearts into eternal life. The Father seeketh such to worship Him. He wants to produce worshippers out of fallen men and women. And I see those amazed men. Handing back, there's the fool, the master's not hungry. So all of a sudden he lifts up his eyes to the gate. And lifting his hand, he says to them, Lift up your eyes and look! Every eye of a disciple comes to that gate. As they look, Jesus says, the field are white or reddened to heart. He or she that gathereth or reapeth, wages, gathereth life unto truth unto life eternal, and that both he that soweth and heath or reapeth, may rejoice together. Men, I sent you to reap that whereon ye but soweth no labor. Other men labor, ye are entered into their laborers. I didn't see those men looked up. And they saw, coming through the gate, the thick white hats of the Samaritans, the two-teen pictures of them, the big white gowns that they wore. The men of Samaria, they're coming out, and as they move along the road, in their midst of a woman. And she's saying, Come, come see the man that told me all things that ever I did. She's not this, but Christ. And he was said, look on the field. What now? You've never seen a wheat field growing. You've never seen the green shoots growing until a blast of stalk comes, and there's the head. The little corn of wheat that fell into the ground is now reproducing, and it's becoming the head of sixty or eighty or a hundredfold. and it's green, and as the sun kisses it and kisses it, it's growing right. The golden clay of the wheat harvest, moving like this in the wind, as the wind blows through it. But if it's not reached at the right time, the soul turns to white. And if the white isn't reached, it begins to grow out. And the little tiny pieces of grain fall from the head, and the harvest can be lost if it doesn't reach. White! To how? Say ye not, there are four months, and then come its harvest. I say unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the peals. White to how? You band of men who have left the fishing-roads from the net. are being taught one of the deepest blessings of their disciples. What? They had lost the harvest of Samaria because, because they thought more meat than milk. They had left Jesus and gone into the city to buy meat. The woman left her water pot and said, Oh, God, thy life is written through thy word, can make me, and thy velocities in vain. If you faintest, must time and exercise on men and meat, the Bible would break out all to America, come on. You don't. mine each is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work. Around Psyker dwells, Jesus entailed the disciples and a woman and an unnumbered men of Psyker gather and they say to him, Jesus, would you come and live in our city for a day? He said, yes. Would you come and eat one out there? He said, yes. Would you come and eat at our table? Yes. Would you tell us the way you thought this afternoon and his whole life in our hearts? He said, Yes. Yes. He said, there was no technology from the world. They are not that. By the way, if you feel that I see among people in the ordinary, they have rightfully separated from the world and come out to Jesus Christ, and in that separation, they have produced a selfish identity. Me and my nice little circle and my nice little jealousy, And we can gather for our little prayer-meeting and our dating of prayer. And yet, oh, my little fellow friends, they have not faced the pointing finger that have said, Go into the world. For God never sends them out of the world without wanting to commission them and send them in for the world. No need to dance with the world. There's no need to flirt with the world. There's no need to sing with the world. But God also... anything in the heart. Hurting me? I suppose it's hurting me. Why did it spread our table and get me a small pile of pile of crisps and our pelvis crisps and say, let's not even have a pancreas and a lovely little selfish fry with crisps and go all together. And there is no one yet to invite it to the public, and there is no room to our table, and lovely, they have given one of their food, a little of which has been in this. And until this isolation of the Church of Jesus Christ in the name of fundamentalism and strictness and exclusivism, it broke! And we go out across no man's land, and we are among them. He went, and he spent two days there. When it was all over, they crowded to the city gate, but waved him goodbye, and who should read what they said. The men of Samaria looked there, and they said, as they saw him going. They said, Woman, now we believe, we are believers now, not because you told us. We've seen him ourselves. We know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the womb. And he left behind the harvest of Samaria, run by a woman, a young convert in the practice of first love, with the uppringing waters in our heart who had left the water pot. God, come see the man that told us. Now I was having a gospel campaign in the local church, and we were having very happy meetings, but we were finding it pretty hard, pretty hard. I was speaking night by night to about ninety-nine percent of faith and peace. And it's very hard to make converts for Jesus Christ from saints or saints. A lovely Christian woman came up to me and she said, Mr. Wildish, thank you for your gospel preaching. I enjoy it so much. She said, I haven't been able to get anyone to come and hear you. She said, you see, I've been saved a number of years and all my friends are Christians. Oh, I think, well, you're rather ashamed of yourself, aren't you? You scared of me and said, what do you mean? And I thought you were ashamed to think that all your friends are Christians. Oh, no, she said. Ah, he's deserted a long time. I don't know any people in the world. I'm not a Jew. And what will shame you yourself to think that you are friendly towards them, because the great friend of sinners? He mingled so freely with publicans and sinners, and he could always speak a word of fear, and they thronged around him with confidence. Oh, he said, I can't go into the world, can I? I said, of course you can. But if you haven't got to go to the Sandlin Inn, you haven't got to go to the... to the shop, you haven't got to go to the house of the old name, but has it around you? Isn't there a young mother with a baby? And couldn't you start to say, oh, what a wonderful baby you've got, and couldn't you say, well, if I didn't give any helping hand to you? someone around you who grows daffodils or roses or tulips and you could stop and talk tulips and be a friend? Isn't there someone around the corner who you could talk something with on the friendly neighborhood they did because these people haven't got Christ and they have sicknesses and sorrows and shackles and problems and they need a friend? And I think if you were friendly with them, and they looked upon you as the nicest neighbor that they had, oh so kind and thoughtful. And when you rang them up, or when you spoke to them about that servant of God coming into town, and would they come with you to listen to him, he would say, well, aren't they? Then you asked, look, yes, you go. As I piled it on a little, he said, I never thought. and a thousand of Christians in their separation from the world which is right, have produced an isolation from the world which is in every church. The punching finger says, the world, the perishing world, you left those ticking boats to make the time. Sometimes God has to use a new convert. in the freshness of first love, with the mounting waters of the living stream of eternal life, to leave her walk upon the high, to teach men who see in the business of sodomy, with the master himself, a month and a month and a third. Let your need be to do the will of him who pray, and who think No, there is such a thing as consecration to service. I can see those priests of old being led out. They've gone through their dedication, and God has accepted them. They're consecrated and set apart to his holy service, and now clad in their garments about to face their priesthood in ministry. They stand in empty hands. And from the altar they have taken the most excellent pieces of the meat offerings. All the fat and the excellencies of those offerings are put in their hands. And you see the priests of the old economy offering a wave offering to the Lord as they begin to move their hands and to slay these excellent pieces of the sacrifice in a wave offering. And God has given to you and to me Christ the excellent Christ in our consecration and our dedication to his service. He is faithful to everything. Not to bother with us, but with faith. I'm going to ask you, as I close and tell you one story, I'm going to ask you, are you willing to bring your body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your intelligence service, and yield it to a pathway of service, not conform to this world, but transform by the renewing of your mind. that you may trace that good and that acceptable and perfect part of God's will, that he plans for you. He says, too late, Mr. Vavish, I'm too old. That's your peatism, Father. That's the cause of your defeat and youthlessness. Lord pointed out to those who sight-walking, said this time cometh not out, but by prayer, the fasting, sacrificial prayer, that will give up something in its intensity and style for that man's need to be met. Let me tell you, right here on the old Florida coast, with all the sunshine and the fishing and the shuffleboard, there is a field and a field of ministry in Britain, will you? be swimming. And in the forest are now for thirteen years on and off, the broker of town and the gym, and I have seen lift all the gold posts from the coast of Florida, men and women, and I could name these who have been stolen. So every day I came to hear the sword of your brother in Christ, and he said, I've just come from one of these Miss Werner, and I've just seen that the bedside of British sovereignty, and my mind went back to Chicago City in the great windows in this British sovereignty. For the first time I met her seventeen years ago, the whole ambition of her life is of us, of us, a smile, love, a kindly act, a worthy treatment. God knows the treasure that she's lifted to the glory land from the dying, starving world. This is time. And she's getting weaker and dying now in her old age with me. She's won many a trophy on this old globe's toast. Her heart is smooth, isn't it? say ye not there are four months of then coming on he's all around you right now and if only you would stand in your dedication and say my hands are empty and as I serve you to take and display Christ with me here it is away in the land of idols, for I can call it nothing more, the land of idols where they say there are more idols than people. In one of the villages there was a great big temple built for an idol god, and the idol god ruled and reigned over several of the Indian villages. There was a man in that idol who used to serve as a priest for this idol god, and he noticed with the passing of the month that the people were bringing their offerings and laying them on the idle ledge, on the little altar ledge. And they were bringing all sorts of second-rate things. They were bringing ardent coins. They were bringing sheep that were wounded, or lame, or blind, or some animal that was sacrificed that wasn't much use out on the field. Second-rate. wondering how he could challenge those people to devotion to the great idol gods. He sent them into the villages and asked them all to come and gather in front of the great temple because God, their God, was going to speak to them and display himself to them. The story that it came to me was that they gathered and he stood in front of those big doors and inside those doors was their idol gods that they very, very small. And he stood there the priest, and he said, I'm going in to speak to our God, and I'm going to ask him what he demands of us. He's not satisfied, and he hath rang them, and he spoke to them, and he told them their fault. And then he went in. And after a bit when he came out, he looked at their faces, and he said, Our God is righteously angry. He demands sacrifice. He demands a young man, a young Indian man, to give his life. He pleaded and pleaded until at last a young Indian stepped forward, and the priest caught hold of him and dragged him through a small door into the presence of the guard. People outside waiting, and then they heard a noise. It was the noise of a noise of a sharp sword hacking and hacking right to the bone, and then horrified they saw blood coming out from underneath the temple door. Then when their priests came out, he had a great curved sword in his hand, dripping with red blood, and he said, Our God is not yet satisfied. He demands another, another young Indian, and he pleaded and paddled until he got enough. The same horrid was happening. He led in the sound of blows and a fresh outpouring of blood underneath the dead. came out and the same awful thing happened. He said, our God demands one more. There must be three. And after pleading and pressing at last, we almost constrained one young man to come. And he was dead in and the same thing happened. The priest didn't come out. They saw the great big gates begin to move, and they knew that they were going to slide back, and they were going to see the faces of them. As the sunlight streamed into the darkened temple, an orb cloud outside gazed in, and as they gazed upon the face of their guard, they noticed just inside the gate three men standing with their faces toward that great idle guard. And then, as it became clear, they saw down on the ground just inside the ledge of the gate, three ghosts all hatched to pieces by a sword. And it was the blood of the ghost that had come out underneath the tent. And then their priest came out with a great sword and said, Our God is satisfied. These men were willing to present their bodies as a sacrifice to death. But Our God doesn't want them to die. He wants them to live. They don't belong to themselves anymore. They belong to this God. They're going to stay with me in the temple. And it was a harsh crowd that went back to the villages, leaving free to serve in that temple. Christian, Christman, Christwoman, you turn to God for life. To serve the living God, servants of the living God, I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, let ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy act of testable unto God, which is your reasonable servant. Could you go out into Florida life with all its peculiar temptations to ease in it? Say, I am going to be a living servant of one who sent Each Tuesday will be an essential to lead me to some cold day, to write a letter, to give a track, to ring a poem, somehow to make Christ known for those who are. Or is this harvest hidden gathered, little in love?