The Joy of the Harvest Feast
Communion Fellowship Church Podcast
John 4:27-45 (October 27, 2024)
You out of John chapter 4 verses 27 through 45. Here now the word of the Lord. 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 that there are four months and then come to 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 the sower and the 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. And after the two days he departed for Galilee. For Jesus himself had testified that a prophet has no honor in his own hometown. So when he came to Galilee, the Galileans welcomed him, having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem at the feast. For they too had gone to the feast. And thus ends the reading of God's holy and inspired and errant word. May he write his eternal truth upon our hearts. You may be seated. I'm gonna be talking a little bit about the conference that I went to. You know, a lot of times when you do illustrations or introductions, you find them from the reading that you encountered in either the past week or in weeks previous and you remember them and note them as a pastor. And I was thinking, well, I went to this wonderful conference that a lot of the illustrations that I heard and a lot of the messages that I heard fit so perfectly well with this passage, I was envious of Richard that he was able to introduce the story of the woman from Samaria here in this narrative. But I'm ecstatic that I get to go ahead and preach this passage of this chapter right after coming back from a missionary conference. One of the speakers that had the greatest impact, I think, Jennifer, and me and Jennifer at the conference was Michael Morales. He is a professor at Greenville Theological Seminary and an author of a variety of books. And he actually did a breakout session one day right after lunch that was the majority of the people there. We only had a few other breakout sessions, primarily for people who were going into the mission field and such. And then everybody else that weren't actual missionaries going into the mission field were in this room. And his presentation, we'd already heard him speak earlier, he began it much more in a lecture format. And so in the title of it was Missions in the Old Testament or something of that nature. And it had a lecture field to it. I felt like more I was in a classroom more than an actual talk or a sermon like a lot of the other more dynamic ones were. And so I was kind of putting myself in this posture of more of a student. And I don't know why it just felt different. And I started taking notes more in a student format. And he was going through the Old Testament, primarily in the book of Exodus, but hitting on a few other chapters and verses here and there. And I really kind of felt like it was somewhat sterile but not bad. It was more data input than it was something tremendously dynamic and inspiring, I would say. But he did ask a question that kind of created, he kind of dropped something in the water that started to kind of change the color of my thinking by talking about how good and faithful Jonas theology was of God. And I started thinking that's interesting. I've always thought about Jonah as being kind of the bad guy in the book of Jonah. He was told to go do something. He was told to go preach to the Ninevites. He didn't want to go to the Ninevites. And then the story ends kind of in a very negative way because he's bitter that God granted them grace. And so I'm like, how could his theology be so good? He was disobedient to the point that God had to use a fish to wake him up and to put him back on the right path. How could Jonah's theology be so great? But as Mr. Morales was going through the scriptures, he was saying that Jonah was a good Israelite. He was a good student of the Old Testament. And he understood a faithful systematic theology of God like a good Israelite would. He knew his scriptures because the very essence of the systematic theology of the Old Testament would secure with completion that Jonah would have known that if he goes to Nineveh and he does what God tells him to do, God's going to do. God is going to grant the grace. He had absolutely zero doubt that if he went to Nineveh, that God was going to grant them mercy. And he could not stand it. The Ninevehites were a wicked people, a horrible, ruthless people who did not treat Israelites very well. And they had, there was a tradition of things of what they had done and they had even heard that they would have fled them alive. They were ruthless. These were not just ignorant people kind of wandering around not knowing anything. These were violent and vile people. And Jonah had every good reason to have a negative view of them. And so when God called him to go and to preach to the Ninevehites repentance that judgment was coming, he was like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to grant them the grace that you will give them because he knew God so well that God would be merciful. And one of the things that Mr. Morales highlighted was that at the center of the systematic theology for the Israelites of who God is, is Exodus chapter 34, verses five through nine. And I want to read that for you because this is not only the systematic theology of God of the whole Testament. It is the systematic theology of God of the whole scripture. And it should be our systematic theology of understanding who our God is in the character that he is in the confidence that we can have that God will bring his people unto himself. He will grant mercy because of his steadfast character, of steadfast love. Verse five here in chapter 34, it says, "The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed. The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, for giving iniquity and transgression and sin. But who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation?" And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. And he said, "If now I have found favor in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people and pardon our iniquity and our sin and take us for your inheritance." This was the central passage from what I understand of what God's people would have understand about the character of God, that he was a steadfast God who had steadfast love and faithfulness. He would keep his promises to be merciful, to a people. And though this was a shadow passage of really how this would be fulfilled in Jesus Christ, they knew this to be the character of God. I think a lot of times in modern evangelicalism, we tend to think of God as the Old Testament to just be this hard God in that, that when Jesus came on the scene that it was this merciful God, no, this was the understanding, the right understanding of who God would be. Yes, that he is a just God and would bring forth wrath. I mean, he told Jonah to go and preach judgment to Nineveh. But in that act alone was a granting of mercy to give an opportunity for repentance. So much that here Moses, when he hears God himself preach a sermon about himself, Moses repents. And repents on behalf of all of the stiff neck people and says, pardon our iniquity and take us for your inheritance. You will get your inheritance. You will do exactly what you say you're going to do. Here we have the Lord himself discipling Moses that he is going to keep his promises. And then Moses gets it, just like Jonah does, so much that when God ever says anything or does anything that seems to actually look like he's not gonna keep his people, he says, wait up, God, you are gonna be a God who keeps his promises. What about your name? What about your glory? What about your promises? And God says, right. And he grants that kind of mercy. This is the kind of mindset that we're supposed to have. And this particular passage today has a few characters in it. And the interesting character is more so the silent characters, even though they say a few things, but they're not the primary focus in this passage. And it is the disciples. And it begins here in verse 27, it says, 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? This transition in the narrative is almost like another story we had before this. The focus is primarily the dialogue between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. And then now the disciples are coming back into the scene and there's a whole different feel if you can imagine yourself being, and I think you're supposed to in this particular reading of John to imagine yourself being like the disciples and coming in, not hearing the previous conversation and then saying, Jesus with a Samaritan woman talking to her. And they're like, what is going on? And they're saying this in their mind, it's saying here that they're thinking these things, they didn't say these things, but they're like astounded. This word marveled is kind of like taking a back and like, whoa, what is going on? Why is Jesus talking to not just a woman, you have to understand the context to a Samaritan woman, these are not our friends. Now I don't know if they had such animosity toward the Samaritans as maybe those like Jonah had against the Ninevites, but it might have come close. It wasn't a positive feeling whenever they saw Samaritans. And here they come into the scene and they're thinking, why is Jesus doing this? The same kind of situation that we see with Jonah. Jonah actually was a step out of the head of the disciples. He actually knew what God was up to. And it was actually the understanding of God's character and his fulfillment of promises that kept him from doing what he wanted to do. And it actually left him embittered there at the end of the story of Jonah. But there's a very similar resentment that is likely still here, even for these disciples who are about the work of Jesus Christ, who are pit to be those who are going along to be used in the furthering of this kingdom, this furthering of the kingdom to bring forth those who are a part of God's inheritance. I think many times we too, maybe in not exact specific forms of like Jonah or maybe the disciples, but I think our doubting of God's character and our doubting of God's fulfillment of promises keep us from being able to one be used by God to be a reaper on behalf of his name, but also to be a rejoicer, a rejoicer in the sense of knowing what is to come through the work of Jesus Christ. And to know that he's going to do it to have such great confidence that we can begin to rejoice even before he does it. I wanna back up just a little bit so that we can have a proper context. I'm not gonna try to re-preach Richard Sermon from last week, but I'm gonna ask you a question based upon for those of you who were here, I know a few of you were here last week, and so this is primarily for you, and then some of you know what passages we were in, so you should be able to answer this question too. Based upon last week's passage, what does God seek? Now you can say there's a lot of answers to that question, but based upon the verses proceeding this particular section of scripture in this chapter, and you can even like read real quick and try to find, what is God seeking? You can answer this, it's not a rhetorical question. What is God seeking? I mean, you can even take a, you know, like even if you don't even wanna try to read or even try to remember last week's sermon, you can just try to think in general, what does God want more than anything else out of us? - Where did you glorify him? - Good, to glorify him. What's another way to, maybe in the context of the actual passage of proceeding this, what's another way to name people who are glorifying God? - People who worship him in spirit in truth. - People who worship him in spirit in truth. It says in the passage that he is seeking true worshipers, when Jesus was talking to the Samaritan woman, he says, looking for true worshipers. Not just people who are worshiping, if you remember here that there was this issue here with the Samaritan woman, they said, well, we're supposed to worship on the mountain, you say that we worship in Jerusalem, there was this doctrine difference of understanding because of a division amongst God's people, and also a mixing of God's people, there was an attempt to worship God, but it was worshiping it wrongly, so much that Jesus does not only correct a woman's lifestyle, she corrects her understanding of doctrine about worship. And he says, yes, worship comes from the Jews, that this is going to be the Jewish line is the correct way of understanding. And he interacts with her in a very personal way, but he is highlighting to her that what God is ultimately seeking is true worshipers, and that's in John chapter four, verse 22, he broke down the barrier that was there with the Samaritan woman, not only that she was a Samaritan, but a woman at that, and how he would converse with her, and he knew her, and he communicated to her in such a way that she was amazed by the fact that this one would know intimate details about her life that many other people probably did not know, and then all at the same time, he is discipling her in faithful doctrinal theology, and simply summarizes what she is to do with him by basically saying, "Woman, believe me." If I would have been able to preach the sermon last week, I would have had three points, and I communicate these three points to you just to connect them to my points. And today's sermon is that I would have said that Jesus had a real relationship of truth and knowledge and connection with the Samaritan woman, that Jesus Christ seeks real worshipers, and I would have moved our highlight to worship her, I couldn't have another R, so I'm kind of playing around with it. Real relationship, real worshipers, and he was the real revelation of fulfillment, of promise. He is letting her know that he is the one that they are hoping in, waiting on to be a savior, to be their Messiah, and so as we have that in our mind, we remember how he communicated this through her through the illustration of water by being there at the well with her, and highlighting to her that he was the living water. Coming from Jeremiah chapter two, verse 13, for my people have committed two evils, they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and hued out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water. Highlighting here God telling his people through the prophet Jeremiah that the two sins that they have committed as one is that they have forsaken him who is the source of living waters, but not only have they forsaken him, they've created and reshaped in their own idolatry and their own lives these cisterns for themselves that are nothing but broken cisterns that can hold no water. Here this Samaritan woman had taken her lifestyle, looking for fulfillment through men in these wrong ways, and she could not fulfill what only God could give her. Zachariah chapter 14, verse eight, it says on that day, living water shall flow out from Jerusalem, half of them to the eastern sea and half of them to the western sea, it shall continue in summer as in winter. This is a prophecy of the coming day of the Lord that when the coming of the Lord comes and he has come, he will be as living waters that do not cease in any season. If she would have known her Old Testament properly, she might have called on to what he was saying when he called himself this living water. And then she would understand that the one that she is to worship is right there before him. The interesting thing about this particular story, just to kind of give you a cheat sheet note in the very beginning, she is going to be the reaper. She is the missionary in this story in an immediate way. Here she was one that was wrong in her theology, wrong in her lifestyle and unfaithful in her lifestyle. But as soon as she met Jesus, she becomes an immediate missionary, she becomes an immediate reaper of God's work and the disciples were coming in who are called to be the reapers who Jesus says that you are called to be the reapers and they're focusing on the temporary and she's already gone out and she's beginning to bring in the harvest on the name of Christ. That's a cheat sheet, it's kind of, it could be used. I could have waited and said, well, say this in the end, but I want to go ahead and get that out there for you. The irony here is that this Samaritan woman that they are marveling that he is talking to is actually going to be used to do the very thing that they are supposed to be doing. And so this is a missionary passage for sure. For us, as his disciples, to be humbled by this and to be provoked by this, that she immediately went to work and we are called to be immediately to be about to work and we should have a broad understanding to look up, to think about what God is calling us to do in the harvesting of his people. John Piper says that missions exist because worship doesn't in certain places throughout the world. But the primary purpose of missions is to bring true worshipers. That's why I went back and talked about the beginning of this passage because this is a missionary passage, but we must understand the ultimate goal is not to just be able to have intimate relationship in the sense that God knows our sin, but he uses that reality and does have that particular posture for us so that because he is seeking forth worshipers. And if you look here in this narrative, you see that people are coming, coming quickly. As the disciples are scratching their head, trying to figure out what Jesus is talking about with the whole food thing, people are already coming. The harvest is already ripe. I'm gonna give you more of that quote from John Piper. He says, "Therefore worship is the goal "in the fuel of missions. "Missions exist because worship doesn't. "Missions is our way of saying the joy of knowing Christ "is not a private or a tribal or a national or ethnic privilege. "It is for all." And that is why we go because we have tasted the joy of worshiping Jesus and we want all the families of the earth included. If we look at the Old Testament and the New Testament, the very point of the proclamation of the gospel, the very point in the proclamation of the kingdom is Psalm 96.3, declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works among all peoples. Isaiah 12.4, made known his deeds among the peoples, proclaimed that his name is exalted, Romans 15.9, in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. In Romans 9.17, that his name might be proclaimed in all of the earth. The very point of missions, the very point of our understanding of our religious walking with God is to glorify his name, to worship his name. Worship is the central part where we dwell with him in worship. So anyway, now we get to my part here, just kind of hashing it out and hopefully we can go through it fairly quickly. I'm actually gonna use John, the very last verse here, John 4.45 as a highlighting of what really is the points of the sermon today. And John 4.45, it says, "When he came to Galilee, "the Galileans welcomed him, "having seen all that he had done in Jerusalem "at the feast, for they too had gone to the feast." Now inside of that one verse here, we see point number one is the concept of welcome. We see in the beginning of this chapter of how Jesus is welcoming the Samaritan woman into his life and in his kingdom and in his calling. But we see here as a fruit of what Jesus is doing is that people are beginning to welcome him as the Messiah. We see here that people are seeing all that he had done at Jerusalem. And he tells the disciples to wake up and to see what is going on. As they are scrambling around to try to figure out this temporary food that he's talking about, he's saying, "Look." And then moments later, there are all these Samaritans showing up to listen to Jesus. We need to look, we need to see what he's doing. I think one of the problems that we have in social media today right now, especially during the election year, is that everybody's talking, not everybody, a lot of people are talking about Jesus is coming, you can just tell, you can just look at social media, look at all the things that they're telling you to look at right now, and you can just know for sure that he's coming. Well, throughout the whole world, there's a lot of other things going on. Now, I'm not saying that Jesus isn't returning, he might be returning at any time. But I'm telling you that the world's perspective and Christ's perspective is not just an American perspective of what you see on Twitter. We need to look and see what God is doing. It was so refreshing that during that conference, I hardly ever looked at my social media, but I heard story after story ever, story of not only what God has been doing for the Christian church in the last 2000 years, but what he's doing right now, and I was thinking, he's growing his kingdom like crazy. We need to look, it's good for us to get our head out of the sand and look at what's going on. We need to see what the Lord is doing in his kingdom. And then thirdly, we need to hear, we don't look like old Lord here is not in that verse there, but look at what's going on here. They're at the feast and we already know proceeding that particular verse that they heard Jesus's words. And that's what transformed them, that they heard the testimony of the woman and that got them going, but why are they really came and took it personal and it came and landed for sure as they heard the proclamation of Christ's words. We need to be listening to his word. The disciples, if they had the systematic theology of Jonah, which came from the various scriptures that they should have been students of, they shouldn't have been as marveling surprise and astounded that he was talking to a Samaritan woman. If they understood the kingdom, which they didn't and we shouldn't fault them for it 'cause we still don't understand the kingdom, we're still scrambling around trying to figure out what it means and we're hopefully day by day and week by week in his word, understanding what the kingdom is. So I'm not trying to throw them under the bus. We don't get it fully either, but they didn't understand because they weren't focusing on the word. Jesus tells Nicodemus, if you remember a couple of weeks ago, he said, you're the teacher of Israel, you don't know these things about being born again. You know, we often think about being born again, being this new New Testament idea. He was saying that if you are a teacher of the scriptures of the Old Testament, you would have known what it means to be born again, that I've always wanted a circumcised heart. I always wanted a renewing of who you are. We should be in his word so that we can not only not be surprised that God is going to actually do what he says he's going to do, but that we can be encouraged and that we can rejoice when we see it happening. 'Cause here he is at the Passover. The Passover, pointing out the Lord's Passover of sin, the Lord's grace and his mercy, his steadfast love. And then it says for they too had gone to the feast. We need to feast, that's my fourth point. We need to rejoice. We need to learn to do better at rejoicing. We need to, if we can see what God is doing, we don't want to end up like Jonah, who sat and bettered under a tree. And then when the tree went away, he just, I would want to die. We need to learn how to rejoice and to be those worshipers that we're trying to go out, to proclaim for the inheritance of Jesus Christ. So we need to welcome, we need to understand the welcome that he has given us, and then we need to welcome him. And then we need to welcome whatever calling he has for us. We need to see what he's doing. We need to hear what he has said, and we need to feast and rejoice in him, so that we might become, and this is like, how many points are you going to have, Charles? So that we might become real reapers. Now this is, I know it's a bad time of the year with Halloween to be talking about reapers, but we are called right here to be reapers of his work and his harvest. We get the joy and the privilege of being the reapers, of not even anything that we can do in of ourselves, just to simply be there to obey him, and get to be a part of the work of bringing in his inheritance. And so that we can be not only real reapers, but real readers of his word, the real readers and students of his promises, so that we can learn how to have real rejoicing in our lives. If we look at what's going on here in verse 27, we see the disciples marveling, being astonished and surprised and astounded, that Jesus is actually doing what he said he's going to do, and we see the Samaritan woman going and calling others to see Jesus. This woman's not even been a faithful follower of Christ one day, and she's actually went up on the disciples in this particular narrative. She's going to tell others about Jesus. Verse 29, it says, "Can this be the Christ?" She wasn't just talking about somebody who was maybe a magician or a mind reader or some kind of special magic person who could know things about her. She knew at least enough to know that this could be the Christ. She was doing the will of the Lord here by reaping. And in verse 30 they were coming, just like that. Now we know that it's not just her right art, articulate way of telling things. We know in the context of the story, going all the way back from the very first chapter of John, that this is the Holy Spirit's doing, that none of one comes to him apart from the gift of the Holy Spirit drawing these people. But we get to see how she got to be used in this drawing of people, of Samaritan people, of the enemy of God's people coming in to see Christ. To see the fulfillment right here in the middle of the fulfillment we have this missionary woman who went out and telling them about Jesus asking this to be the Christ. And then people were coming and then in verse 31 the disciples are like, where did Jesus get some food? What is he talking about? He's, did somebody give him a sandwich? What is he talking about? It's really a kind of unfortunate scene here. And then Jesus says, my food is to do the will of him who sent me into accomplish his work. Think about what Jesus is saying. This is an amazing statement here that his food, we were talking about living water earlier and how that through that living water there's life and in that life there is this fulfillment of the one who is called to be the one for us to worship. But here he's saying that I have food, that my food is to do the will of him who sent me into accomplish his work. And when we think about this, his sustenance, his joy, his strength is doing what God told him to do, what the Father had told him to do and to be about the accomplishing of his work. Well, let's rewind what's going on here that the woman is by default already obedient to that. She's doing the will of the Father by bringing people to Christ. And we are seeing this joyful scene of Samaritans coming to Jesus lost people coming to Jesus. She's getting to be a part of that accomplishing of Jesus's work. That's the food that he has to bring. So I ask you, what sustains you in your walk with Jesus Christ? That is a rhetorical question because it's going on for a long time if you answer, but what sustains you? What is your strength? What motivates you to call yourself a Christian and to say you're doing a Christian life? Is it just simply because you feel loved by him? That's a good reason that you feel forgiven by him, that you get to begin to know him. Jesus says his food is to do the will of him who sent him and to accomplish the work of his Father. Does the growth of the kingdom of God sustain you? Does it feed you? Does it nourish you? Does it motivate you? Are you driven by the call of the kingdom of God being spread? A lot of times I think about this church ministry in light of my own peace. I like the idea of living out here in the country somewhat away from some of the ills of the world and I like the people around here. I mean, we're still a bunch of sinners and we're not free from sin at all. Our home's not free from sin. Our church is not free from sin. This community is definitely not free from sin, but it has a nice serene feeling. You guys are pretty, driving down the road. It's nice and I go, we've got a little country church here in the middle of nowhere and it's kind of nice. I just started thinking, I'm so glad that the Lord gave us this nice postcard scene of life. And I think sometimes it's that postcard seeing that motivates me. Can we just make that postcard just a little prettier? Can we add a little bit of accent here and there and God, could you allow me to have this? Or am I actually being sustained that God's kingdom is conquering over all things? Is that my joy? Is that what motivates me? Michael Morales started off earlier on in the conference by highlighting that Jesus is on the throne and he has inherited all nations. And our commission is to go simply out and to claim his inheritance for him. That's it, that's the end game. That's everything. Jesus is reigning and we're called to go out. And sometimes in a very militant force, not in a sense of weapons of earthly warfare, but in a very fierce fight to see the nation's captive under his name. It's not as serene and put your risk as my hopes are at times. And when I have been confronted with the reality of what my calling really is, I sometimes feel a lot more like Jonah. I don't want to be disturbed in my postcard scene because God might actually do what he's going to do and said he is going to do. And he might use us in ways that we do not like. He might rip up that postcard scene so that we might be a part of his fulfillment of drawing people into himself. This woman, if you think about it, her mission work was based upon the fact that she had to tell people that Jesus knew really bad things about her. We see this. I mean, think about it. Her, for ever since this was written within the last couple of 2000 years, we know that this woman was in inappropriate relationships with five men. That had to get exposed. That's not a pretty postcard picture, but it is a miraculous thing that she obviously felt willing to be exposed because she had met Jesus Christ. We too, at times, will have to have our lives exposed, torn apart, turned upside down, crucified, even killed so that his name could be glorified. Does that sustain you in your walk with God? Are you willing to let it all go so that he may get the glory in the end? Not only are you willing to do it and is that going to motivate you and sustain you, but what is your joy? What is your joy of not only your salvation, but the joy of being able to be called children of God? Do you take the light? Do you have opportunities to take delight that he will bring about the fulfillment of his kingdom through your broken lives? Will you take delight in knowing that the people that you wish would really get it? Might actually be given grace and mercy. They may seem to get off the hook because that touch that you wish that they would get for what they did actually got placed on Jesus Christ, on the cross. Are you willing to rejoice in that? Your inbitament that you might have toward people that you would take joy in knowing that the punishment for their harm to you could actually be placed on Christ? Who delighted to do the will of his father and to accomplish his work by dying on the cross, on the behalf of those who sin. And will you rejoice in that harvest? Here we see the end of this narrative at a feast. We cannot come to this table without being humbled by the reality that our broken lives are being exposed here. Why in the world would the perfect son of God need to be crucified unless we are all like the Samaritan woman? We cannot come here. We cannot partake of this. There's no need. If you don't need Jesus like the Samaritan woman, you don't need to take this table because this table is only for people who can say he knows everything about me and he still loved me enough to die for me. And I acknowledge everything about me. That had to be placed on him, so that I might be able to worship him. This is a humbling table. This is a commission table because those who take this have to hear the words of Jesus. Are you willing to take this cup that I bear? Are you willing to let your lives be exposed and killed so that his name will be glorified? But it's also a table of rejoicing and gladness 'cause it is a table of victory he has accomplished what he said he would do and he's brought people to himself. You all are like a bunch of Samaritans, like a bunch of vile sinners. Some of you, if you know your own heart, should be able to say, my sins are far worse than hers. And we can under this table and rejoice. Not even having to know the details of each one of your lives to really know though, I mean, unless I'm just, again, confused and just think, man, I must be just a really bad person and some people are really good. I've gotten to the point now after years of pastoring, everybody is nasty and vile and we get to come to his table and rejoice and look forward to the finalization of that table. What a glorious day it will be. Let us pray. Heavenly Father we thank you so much.