How to be Wise

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[Message] We are continuing the exposition of the Gospel of John, however and we’re turning for Scripture reading to John chapter 4 and verse 27. And while you’re turning to John 4:27, let me remind you that this chapter contains our Lord’s interview with the Samaritan woman and now in verse 26 Jesus has just said to her concerning his Messiahship, “I who speak to you am he.” The disciples in the meantime had gone into one of the villages nearby to secure something for them to eat, and so we read in verse 27,

“And at this point his disciples came and they marveled that he had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said what do you seek or why do you speak with her? So the woman left her water pot and went into the city and said to the men, come see a man who told me all the things that I have done. This is not the Christ is it?” (That’s a most interesting expression and it is probably one of those relatively rare occasions in which the question is framed to expect a negative answer, but in which there is a tentativeness about it that suggests that there is a note of expectation on her part in the way that she asks it. This is not the Christ is it? But hopefully you will say yes it must be.) They went out of the city and they were coming to him, in the meanwhile, the disciples were requesting him saying, Rabbi, eat. But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about. The disciples therefore were saying to one another no one brought him anything to eat did he? 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 and then comes the harvest? Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields that they are white for harvest. Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true, one sows and another reaps. I sent you to sent you to reap that for which you have not labored, others have labored and you have entered into their labor. And from that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman who testified he told me all of the things that I have done. So when the Samaritans came to him they were asking him to stay with them and he stayed there two days and many more believed because of his word and they were saying to the woman, it is no longer because of what you said that we believe for we have heard for ourselves and know hat this one is indeed the Savior of the world.”

That’s a remarkably climactic statement, “Savior of the world,” and we will comment upon it in due course. May the Lord bless this reading of his word. We are turning again to the Gospel of John, in the morning hour of exposition and the subject for today is the wisdom of winning souls or how to be wise. Who would not like to be wise? In the physical life there are many ways in which we might think that it is possible to acquire wisdom. One may acquire wisdom we usually think by education or if not by education by special study and perhaps even experience, and possibly inheritance for one of the greatest things that a person could possibly have is the inheritance of a wise mother and father.

To be wise spiritually arises form many sources as well. One thinks of gaining wisdom from the study of the Scriptures, or from Christian experience or again life in a Christian home. One of the most neglected ways or one of the neglected ways is the subject of comments by Solomon in Proverbs chapter 11 and verse 30, and surely it is a needed matter indeed for believers. Solomon wrote in the Proverbs, “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he who is wise winneth souls.” Cain asked the question, Am I my brother’s keeper? And affirmative answer is called for, yes. The Apostle Paul in the greatest exposition of the gospel of God in any of his epistles, in the Epistle to the Romans in chapter 1 of his epistle says that, “I am a debtor both to Greeks and to barbarians, both to the wise and the foolish, thus for my part I am eager to preach the gospel to you who are in Rome.” It would be marvelous to have the poet’s longing, “Oh for a passion for souls, oh for a pity for souls, oh for a love that loves unto death, oh for a fire that burns.”

One thinks when thinking of Solomon’s proverb, how appropriate it is that Solomon is the author of it. One of the remarkable things about the Bible to me is the fact that the authors of Scripture were not simply to be regarded as men who were like our secretaries who are taking down dictation word for word then having us sign a letter at the conclusion of them. But the writers of Holy Scripture, while the products of their writing were precisely the words that God intended, nevertheless have given to us the word of God through their own personalities. And in fact, their personalities were prepared by God before they became the recipients of his word and the communicators of his word for us. The education of Moses as one of the royal race of Egypt was a qualification necessary for the leader of the exodus, the writer of the Pentateuch. The experience of David with its successive stages almost like geologic strata touching each other in abrupt contrast, first a shepherd youth then a fugitive warrior, and last of all a victorious king. These experiences were qualifications for writing the great Book of the Psalms. For in one moment, the Psalmist is on the peak in another he’s in the depths of discouragement and despair and it takes a man who’s had an unusual experience to write about things like that. So he chose someone like David, put him through the experiences by which he might give us that word, and then gave David that word for us to profit from, so that his experience was the compound of meekness and might, of deep distress and jubilant victory. These experiences are the experiences of each of us.

Solomon could never have written the Psalms. He was not a man for writing of the Psalms. He could never have written, “The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want.” He could never write as David did in the 57th Psalm of his flight from Saul and his life in the cave with the Lord, what he experienced would never have suggested to him those plaintive strains that came from David in that cave.

But on the other hand, David could never have written the things that Solomon wrote. He had a peculiar experience of his own. And one of the experiences that Solomon had was simply this that he was a person that had all of the things that the world would like to think of as the blessings of life. He had all of the pleasures that you might think of. He had all of the riches that one might think of. He had all of the wisdom that one might seek to gain. In fact, all of these kinds of experiences produced in Solomon the same expression as that of Bunyan, “I was there.” But Solomon is the one who writes about the vanity of the world and the vanity of the soul that sets its trust in the things of this life, riches, wisdom, might and power, all those things that characterized him.

Now, it is Solomon who says, “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and he who is wise winneth souls.” You might think that he would give us some clues to becoming the kind of royal king that he became, a man of influence and power. Or to become as wise as he became, but no, Solomon says, “He that winneth souls is wise.” And the wise man is a man who wins souls. In other words, the person who has been won is to win Solomon says, the wisest man of his day.

Now why is it that there is often apathy among Christians? Well, sometimes it’s an absence of conviction that men are lost. I’m sure that there are times when many of us give the impression that we really do not believe that men are lost. Oh, if we were asked, are men lost? Most of us who have grown up in a church in which the word of God is proclaimed we would say, “Yes men are lost.” Does not Paul say that the word of the cross is to those who are perishing foolishness? Does not he describe Christians as those who are on their way to perdition in 1 Corinthians 1:18 and in 2 Corinthians 2:15 and in 2 Corinthians chapter 4 verse 3, he describes the non Christians as those who are “perishing,” as if they’re already on the road and the goal is certain to come if there is no transformation by the power of God and the response of man. But sometimes we act as if men are not lost, we are not concerned.

There was an old Presbyterian pastor evangelist by the name of George Mingins. He grew up in Philadelphia and he had a youth that was characteristic of many, he was an infidel and he had many unbelieving companions. Sometime after his conversion he was visiting one of his old companions and staying with him for a few days. The man said to him, “George, I hear you’re a Christian now, is that so?”

“It is,” said Mr. Mingins.

“And George, do you believe in God?”

“I do.”

“And George, do you believe in Hell and that all who do not believe in God and in Jesus Christ will ultimately go to hell?”

“I do most solemnly,” Mr. Mingins said.

“Well George,” said his friend, “does Christianity dry up all the milk of humanity in one’s body as it does in yours?”

“Why,” said Mr. Mingins, “what do you mean?”

He said, “I mean this, that you’ve been living under my roof for three days and three nights, knowing and believing all of this that you’ve just told me and yet you’ve never put your hand on my shoulder or said one word to save me.”

I think we often go through life like that. We have many opportunities to speak about men who are lost and to men who are lost but you might think if we followed around some Christians and some of us and all of us at some time or another, that we really do not believe that men are lost. There is also an absence of concern that we really believe are lost. When you think of the tears of Jeremiah you can certainly say that well that man whatever you might say about him, he certainly had a concern for the lost. It was our Lord who reached the top of the Mount of Olives, looked over the city and burst out into tears for the city. It was the Apostle Paul who said that he labored day and night with tears that men might be responsive to the message that he proclaimed.

I read a story just a few days ago of G. Campbell Morgan’s interview with R.W. Dale. Mr. Dale was one of the great preachers of England a generation or so ago. And Mr. Morgan had an interview with him in his study and Mr. Dale brought up the subject he said, “You know there is only one evangelist that I know of who has had the right to speak to a lost soul.”

Mr. Morgan said, “Who was it?”

He said, “Well it was Mr. D.L. Moody. And it was because he never spoke of the possibility of a man being lost without tears in his voice.” And Mr. Moody was known for turning from fiery denunciation into quiet plaintive tearful heartbroken constraint that men might respond to the gospel.

Perhaps also it’s a failure to appreciate the value of a human soul. It’s the Lord Jesus who tells us what it is involved in this. For he says, “What doth it profit a man to gain the whole world and to forfeit his soul? What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” That’s how important it is to be sure that our soul has right relationship with the Lord, and the soul of others. Isn’t it remarkable in our Lord’s life that he left the glory of the presence of the Triune God, the Father and the Spirit, he himself the second person, came down into this human scene. Then on the Mount of Transfiguration, he went up into the mountain with Peter James and John, and there he was transfigured. He appeared with Moses and Elijah in glory and then again came out of the glory causing Bible teachers to say, overlooking of course the sovereign determination of God that he left the glory twice in order to carry out his saving work. You certainly gain a conception of our Lord’s appreciation of the importance of doing the will of God with reference to lost men.

Well looking at our story that we’ve been looking at, our Lord’s encounter with the woman of Samaria. They have discussed water and he has pointed her to the water that is eternal life. They have discussed worship and he has pointed out that the time is coming and now is in his ministry that worship will no longer be carried on either in Mount Gerizim the mountain of the Samaritans or in Mount Zion, the mountain of Jerusalem. But actually worship shall take place wherever a man in spirit and in truth lifts his heart to God.

Now there is a little there’s a little incident that illustrates the importance of giving testimony to one’s faith. I don’t know the name of this woman with whom our Lord spoke. Some of the later traditions of the large professing church organization contend that her name was Photini, that she was later martyred and that her head was kept as a relic in the Basilica of Saint Paul’s Church in Rome. It was actually shown to Cornelius a Lapide, one of the earlier commentators on the bible.

Well we don’t really know who the woman was but it seems from the account that she had been led into a beginning faith in our Lord. It would grow no doubt as the years went by, but nevertheless, it does seem that she came into town after she had met the Lord Jesus with great things to say about him. In fact, her activities and our Lord’s activities both illustrate aspects of giving out our faith. She, the need for us to give out the faith and our Lord illustrates the method by which we should do it.

We read in verse 28, in fact we read in verse 27 that the disciples came just as he said, “I who speak to you am he.” That’s very providential in fact one might construct a message on the sovereignty of God in this that the disciples were absent while he was speaking with her because they surely would have interrupted sooner or later and said, to him, “Why are you speaking with this woman?” But they were gone and they had an uninterrupted conversation and finally when he says, “I who speak to thee am he,” they appear on the scene but they keep quiet and so she leaves.

Now we read in verse 28, “The woman left her water pot and went into the city and said to the men come see a man who told me all the things that I’ve done. This is not the Christ is it?” Why did she leave her water pot? Well some have said she purposefully left it because she no doubt had filled it and now she was leaving it for our Lord and for the disciples. And she had now gone off into the city because she was a believing woman. She speaks tentatively but nevertheless expectantly when she says, “This is not the Christ is it?” Others say and it’s probably more likely that this is true that she simply forgot about the water pot in her excitement at what had happened to her. Someone has said, “We don’t really know the answer to that question but we know this, that she came with a water pot and she left carrying the whole well.” Well, that’s true because she, if she were a believer and it appears that she is, she had received what our Lord calls here in verse 14 and 15, “The well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Now when she goes into the city she said to the men of the city, “Come see a man who told me all that I have done.” Now have you noticed the beautiful contrast between those words? Look at it. She said, “Come see a man,” and the original text that word is there, “Come see a man,” but a man who “Told me all that I have done.” Note the contrast. The man and yet he is a man who has told her all the things that she has done. That’s the beautiful contrast we find in Holy Scripture of our Lord as the God man, truly man, fully God.

Well the response of the Samaritans is striking. “They went out of the city and they kept coning to him.” One looking at the tense of that last verb, “kept coming to him,” finds it vividly descriptive of the fact that the testimony that this woman gave in the city was so remarkable that there was a continuous stream of people who were coming out to hear about the man who had told her all things that she had done.

Now I want you to notice the contrast between the disciples who know the Lord, whose faith is much more mature than the woman. They have gone into the city and all they have brought back out are some loaves. She, the new believer, fresh in the possession of the knowledge of the Messiah, she goes into the city and she blurts out all of the things that have come to her and immediately there is a stream of people who are coming out of the city in order to hear of the Lord Jesus Christ. So the mature believers bring loaves, the immature one is responsible for the stream of people.

You know I’ve often seen that happen in the Christian faith and I must say, it often happens in my life. We see an individual who’s been a Christian for a long time; the chances are he hasn’t spoken to someone about his soul in six months to a year. Many people are like that, they confess that, they give testimony to that fact. And then there is a new Christian who has just found the Lord and it seems that in every conversation they have, something comes up about the Lord Jesus Christ. And of course they blunder in some of the things that they say, but they do give forth a testimony and are responsible for others coming to know the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s one of the disappointing things in life to see a Christian grow in the knowledge of the word of God and become less and less fervent in the proclamation of its truth.

Now the conversation that our Lord has with the disciples takes place, and it’s a lesson on priorities. And what a magnificent lesson it is. They had come they had noticed that he was speaking with a woman, that was the reason for incredulous surprise, and that’s probably why they didn’t say anything. They probably were startled to see that the Lord Jesus was actually speaking with a woman. Now we wouldn’t think anything about it, but we must remember the society in which they grew up. No rabbi would have ever carried on a conversation with a woman in public. One of their sayings ran, “A man shall not be alone with a woman in an inn, not even with his sister or his daughter on account of what men may think. A man shall not talk with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife, and especially not with another woman on account of what men may say.” Now I don’t want you to take that to heart. This morning when the message was over, I walked out and John [name indistinct] walked out and he was walking in front of his wife about ten feet. And I said, John wait, come back, it’s alright to walk with your wife, here in Believers Chapel. [Laughter] He smiled, he was getting ready to go to class and he had something on his mind, but you know that’s the way they did in those days, the men walked and the woman followed along afterwards, and no conversation went on between them. The rabbis regarded women as inferior to men in every way.

You all know the ancient prayer, you’ve heard it mentioned many times, “Blessed art Thou o Lord who has not made me a slave or a Gentile or a woman.” [Laughter] And then the woman’s prayer is, “Blessed o Lord who hast fashioned me according to Thy will.” Now if you think the woman has gotten the better of that exchange, you must remember that you are looking at it as a Christian and not a Jew. That prayer of hers is simply a prayer that she is nothing more than a piece of furniture. That’s the way they felt.

But here the disciples appear at the well and are Lord is engaged in a conversation with a woman and they are startled. And noticed that that text says, “Yet no one said what are you seeking or why do you speak with her?” They were so startled by it, it was incredulous surprise that he was actually speaking with a woman. Well she left at that moment and so the disciples having food turned to our Lord and they said to him, “Rabbi, eat.” Now in this little encounter that they have, the Lord and the disciples, you’ll notice that words are given two meanings. They speak about the meaning in ordinary life; he speaks about the spiritual significance of the same term. They say, “Rabbi eat,” he says, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.” So when he mentions food, they look around and they say, “No one brought him anything to eat did he?” And then our Lord must explain. And so he explains to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.” In other words, so far as our Lord was concerned, the important thing to him was not food and drink. The important thing to him was doing the will of God, doing his will accomplishing his work.

That reminds me of a statement that David makes in the 40th Psalm when speaking typically of the Lord Jesus he says that, “I have set the Lord always before me.” That of course is looking at things as we ought to look at them. Now how differently do we look at them? Well, we look for thrill in life. We look for pleasures, we look for yachts and a second home and a long list of securities that might be in our portfolio because we want financial security. We would love to have a home, we would love to have financial security, we would love to have a hobby, we would love to spend our life in pleasure but our Lord has a very significant word here for Christians. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” And one of the reasons that we are so ineffectual is that our priorities are not straight. We know these things but we do not do things. It is said of the Spartans that they sang when they entered a battle, but of the Persians, they had to be forced along by their officers to engage in the conflict. So it’s no wonder that a few Spartans were worth hundreds of Persians. And in the Lord’s work, the same is true. It is a person who has an understanding of proper priorities who will be useful to the Lord. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.”

Now Jesus goes on to say, “Do you not say there are yet four months and then comes the harvest?” That must have been a proverbial saying; something like Rome was not built in a day. “Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields that they are white for harvest.” The commentators comment upon the fact that in Palestine at this time, there was no harvest that was white. Someone came to me this morning and said, “Is not a cotton field white?” Well, yes I guess a cotton field is, they had cotton in Egypt, but the commentators don’t seem to be aware of any cotton fields among the Jews, because they all comment upon the fact that the harvest is not white over there. When have you ever seen a harvest, excluding the question of cotton fields for a moment, when have you seen harvests that are white? Well it’s hard to find one, I’m sure. But as our Lord looked about, evidently there was something white and they would have understood it. You know how the Samaritans dressed? Well they dressed in long white flowing garments. And since our Lord at one moment is speaking about natural food and them of spiritual food, since he so quickly moves from the water that we drink to the well of water that springs up into everlasting life, it wouldn’t be surprising to me at least for him to understand by this, “Look on the fields and see these Samaritans that are coming out in their long flowing garments, the fields are white unto the harvest. People that need to hear this message that you are commissioned to proclaim.”

Now he also goes on to say,

“Already he who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for life eternal that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together. For in this case the saying is true one sows and another reaps, I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored, others have labored and you have entered into their labor.”

Who are the others of whom he speaks here? Perhaps the prophets of the Old Testament most likely John the Baptist, John the Baptist from whose ministry they had come John and our Lord are giving out the word. The disciples are to be the reapers and there is to be a rejoicing of those who sow and those who reap together. H.E. Ironside in one of his books perhaps his commentary on the Gospel of John said, “There are some people who say I do not believe in foreign missions.” And he said, “They ought to be thankful there was someone who did believe in foreign missions.” All of us are the product of missionary activity on the part of some. It may have been your mother or your father, it may have been a friend, it may have been a preacher of the gospel as in my case, but we are all debtors to someone for the salvation that has come to us.

Now John rounds off the account with this magnificent climax. Samaritan believers who have come out to hear him and now who are saying to the woman, “We are believers too and not simply because of what you said, but we have heard him ourselves and we now proclaim and know him as one who is indeed the Savior of the world.” Not simply of the Jews, for salvation is of the Jews, but salvation for the Gentiles as well, and furthermore, he saves even Samaritans.

He is the Savior of the world and again we see this great stress in the Gospel of John upon the universal salvation of the Lord Jesus Christ. He saves, not everybody without distinction or without exception, he does not die for everybody without distinction or without exception, but he dies for Jews and Gentiles and Samaritans, he’s the Savior of the world. You see this note that goes all through the Gospel of John which is so often so misunderstood.

I like that expression here in which they say, “It’s no longer because of what you said that we believe.” In the Greek text, that’s an expression that means something like your speaking. Some of the commentators have translated it as chatter. “We not only believe because your chatter, but we have heard him ourselves.” John Calvin said, “Their faith now has stronger support than a woman’s tongue” But I fear that some of these men are speaking like some of the Rabbis, what they really meant was we are not simply indebted to you because you told about him, but we now have come into contact with him ourselves. But actually their faith stemmed from the activity of this woman.

Well as you look over this account, you surely can see that our Lord is the incomparable worker. He is the one person who has his priorities totally right. “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and to finish his work.” How foolish it is my dear Christian friends, for you to have some goal other than the doing of the will of God and the finishing of the work that he has given you to do.

Notice how our Lord carries on his work. He worked amid the daily round of life. He didn’t say now let’s organize big campaigns and let’s be sure to advertise our coming into each city, there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, but all of his work was done amid the daily round of life. Just what you have every one of you. Some of you are executives, some of you work in offices, some of you are laboring men, many of you labor in other ways, you ladies who are in the room, many of you work, there is your field of evangelism. He tactfully began on her plane of life. He said, “Give me water to drink.” And when she responded he responded. He moved from the earthly to the heavenly. Now that’s one of the clues to being a good servant of the Lord Jesus Christ, to be able to move from the earthly to the heavenly.

Dr. Walter Wilson of Kansas City who was one of the outstanding evangelists of the last generation, and used to do this so beautifully, many stories are found in the Doctor’s case book which he wrote explaining how he managed to make up conversations with individuals about spiritual things by just taking their words and as our Lord did giving them another meaning. There is a story of a student who was taking a photograph of a boat by the name of “The Lurline.” And as the boat was lying alongside the wharf, a youth standing nearby volunteered the statement, “I suppose she’s as safe as Hell.” The student turned around and said, “Do you consider Hell to be safe?” And that was the occasion for the beginning of a conversation about eternal things.

There is the story of a woman who met an individual at her door who was seeking to sell her some kind of stain remover. She listened to his comments concerning it, she even bought the thing that he was selling and then she said, “I know something which will remove stains too.”

He said, “What’s that?” naturally.

And she said, “The blood of Jesus Christ. That will remove the stain of human sin.” And that was the occasion for the preaching of the gospel of Christ.

We also ought to pay attention, oh incidentally, some years ago I saw something by Walter Wilson, I said, “That is a good idea, I’m going to try to use that.” And from time to time I have tried to use that. It wasn’t but just a week or so after I read Dr. Wilson’s exhortation that I went in the grocery store to buy just a few things, and I guess I went through the nine items or less section. And when my goods were totaled up, the man behind the counter said, “Three sixteen.”

I said, “You know that reminds me of a text of the Bible, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” [Laughter] Well we engaged in a little conversation. I must confess, I love to get those telephones calls, now they bother me at times, but those telephone calls in which somebody calls and acts as if they know you. Is this Mr. Johnson, Mr. S. Lewis Johnson? or something. And so I’m on my guard then and when they finish I frequently say, “Well by the way, I have something to give you that is free of charge.” And I have some interesting conversations. [Laughter] I confess that most of them are rather negative in results, but some are positive.

Our Lord created a desire for the heavenly, he brought conviction to her conscious by pointing out that she was not really married to anyone at the present time and she said, “Sir, I see you’re a prophet.” He answered her difficulties, and that’s something that we ought to do. I remember a few years back I was preaching in California and after one of the meetings one of the wives with her husband came for a little get together afterwards and her husband had some difficulties, two particularly. One was the reason for sin and then the reason for the cross. And we engaged personally and privately in a little discussion of those two questions and then the next night which was the last night of the meetings, it was in Riverside California, he came up with an expensive Scofield Bible in arms. And his wife, Betty, remarked to me, Jack Benny Burkes has broken down and bought it. Well, he had at least responded enough to the explanations to go buy himself a Bible and appeared at the meeting the next night with a Bible. Our Lord answered difficulties so far as the woman was concerned and then he revealed himself as the answer.

May I close by asking you a question? I know this is Easter morning and we think about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but sometimes it’s more important to think about some other things, some priorities in our lives. Do we really want to be wise? Would you want to be wise from the standpoint of Heaven? The Apostle Paul said, “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time.” Solomon said the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he who is wise wins souls.” So the person who is truly wise in the divine reckoning of things is a person who wins souls.

Hudson Taylor was the most famous missionary to China in modern times and when he was at Ning-Po in China, he led to Christ a young Buddhist leader, a dealer in cotton. After hearing the message which was on John 3:14 and 15, this man rose and said, I’ve long sought the truth as did my father before me but without finding it. I’ve traveled far and near but I’ve never searched it out in Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism I’ve found no rest, but I do find rest in what we have heard tonight. Hence forward, I am a believer in Jesus. He became a leader in spiritual things in that city. Later he was talking with Mr. Taylor and he raised a question not easily forgotten, “How long have you had the glad tidings in England?” he asked Mr. Taylor. Taylor very ashamed said vaguely it was several hundreds of years. “What!” exclaimed Mr. Nyi in astonishment, “Several hundred years? Is it possible that you have known about Jesus so long and only now have come to tell us? My father sought the truth for more than twenty years and died without finding it. Oh, why did you not come sooner?”

The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he who is wise develops his portfolio, seeks out ways in which to enjoy himself, works hard for a home, a hobby, a boat. He who is wise winneth souls. “My meat, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” May God help us to get our priorities properly arranged. If you’re here today and you’ve never believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, of course you could not win a soul. You cannot possibly win souls until you have been won. But he who has been won wins. And so we invite you to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ who offered the atoning sacrifice and is the Savior of the world of Jews, Gentiles, Samaritans and Dallasites. Come to Christ, believe in him, rest your life for time and eternity on him, start getting your priorities right. Trust Christ, and then make your meat the doing of the will of God and the finishing of his work that he has for you. Make your daily round of life the opportunity to represent him. May God give you courage, wisdom, wisdom scripturally to do his will.

[Prayer] Our heavenly Father, we confess to Thee that so often we fail putting last things first and taking the things that ought to be first and putting them last. Oh God, help us to have the attitude toward ministry that the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles and the saints of God have had Christ first, others next, self last. If there are some here who have never believed in Christ, oh God may they have the experience of the woman and the Samaritans, finding in him the answer of the ages, the one in whom blood one may have his stains of sin removed. And then Lord, help us to if …

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