I am not often tempted to grumble over a man being saved, but on this occasion, I mumbled to myself, Are you serious?
Spurgeon was testing the acoustics at the grand Surrey Gardens, where he was set to preach the following day. He bellowed in what he thought was an empty room, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” A workman, looking up perplexed, was eventually saved by the utterance. In Spurgeon’s own words,
A day or two before preaching at the Palace, I went to decide where it should be fixed; and, in order to test the acoustic properties of the building, cried in a loud voice, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” In one of the galleries, a workman, who knew nothing of what was being done, heard the words, and they came like a message from Heaven to his soul. He was smitten with conviction on account of sin, put down his tools, went home, and there, after a season of spiritual struggling, found peace and life by beholding the Lamb of God. Years after, he told this story to one who visited him on his death-bed. (C.H. Spurgeon: The Early Years, 534)
Good for him, thought I, sarcastically (to my shame). The him of my thought was not the man who heard the voice as from heaven but Spurgeon himself. Here he was, practicing to preach to his largest crowd (23,654 people), totally unaware anyone was listening, and a man is saved. This was not my experience. Here I was, in a season of grabbing at fruit — practically dangling from it — yet none would fall. Spurgeon’s feet were buried in fruit simply by breathing a few words of Scripture. Good for him.
What do you do when you serve the Lord and little happens? When you’ve spent all night fishing with no catch? How do you feel when you see another disciple’s boat filling and sinking from all the fish? You plead, pray, and watch — little to nothing happens. You carry on patiently, hopefully, expectantly — at first. Months pass. Years. Doesn’t Jesus want me to bear much fruit? Am I wasting my life?
Brother or sister, Jesus’s distinction between sowers and reapers may help you keep your hope in him while laboring in hard, seemingly fruitless seasons.
Open Your Eyes
Observe Christ’s vital distinction in John 4:35–38:
Do you not say, “There are yet four months, then comes the harvest”? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.
First, realize that Jesus does confront a real reason for unfruitfulness: a lack of urgency. At this point in the story, his disciples are worried about lunch while Jesus is worried about the harvest. They leave him to get food, but he has food they don’t know enough about: doing his Father’s will. “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). Their eyes were down, but Jesus would lift them to the vast opportunity before them: “Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest.”
Can’t you see it? he asks. Some of us don’t see more results because we have not yet lifted our eyes to see all the souls to gather into the kingdom. We live in a time to reap, but we don’t observe how the Lord has been at work in family members and friends and neighborhoods.
Paradoxically, one despised Samaritan woman, who had just departed from Jesus as the disciples arrive, leaves with her eyes up, fixed on the souls back home. She meets the Savior, marvels at him, and immediately goes to the white fields in Samaria. She forgets her water jug at the well. “Come,” says she, “see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” (John 4:29).
After Jesus stays in Samaria a few days, the townspeople tell 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” (John 4:42). She was urgent in the work and gathered fruit for eternal life as soon as she herself found it. Such fruit the hesitant and slothful will never see.
Sowers and Reapers
Meanwhile, there’s another reason we don’t see expected fruit: Some of us are sowers. Did you catch Jesus’s distinction? “For here the saying holds true,” our Lord said, “‘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.”
One person reaps. They come in after the ground has been tilled, the seeds have been sown, the crop has been husbanded and protected. Reapers secure the harvest when it is ripe. They seem to have the preferred part. They enter another person’s labor and collect the results. The reaper is like the soldier who comes to gather spoils from the enemy camp but just misses the actual battle. These reapers are often the sung heroes, those who are used mightily of God toward visible and lasting results. They preach to a tilled generation, or even to an empty room — and men are saved.
Another sows. This is the guy who often does all the hard work leading up to harvest. He is the one who labors in hope without ever handling the crop. The sower’s hands are full of dirt, not wheat. His hands grip the plow, not the produce. He has sweat on his brow and pain in his back. The other man works as well, but this man does not have the same payoff to assist him in his plodding. He often sets the stage for others. The word he works with is Someday.
We have our sowers, don’t we? The mother who pours her best years into her children, not seeing what will become of them for decades, if ever. College ministers who labor on the campus with students for only a few years, planting seeds and watering them, not seeing their growth in the lifetime to come. A small group of faithful saints who pray for a revival they never see. Missionaries who labor on the frontiers, sowing their lives into learning foreign nouns and verbs so that someday they can translate God’s word into a new tongue and share the story of Jesus with those who have never heard.
These might see children grow up and follow the Lamb, students deployed for Christ, villages or countries bow the knee to the King — but often their eyes never see it. Reapers come in the following generations and profit from the work they started.
Fruit Is Better Together
So, what can one say to the reapers and the sowers among us?
Reapers, continue to reap. Leave no field ungathered. Lift up your eyes and see the white harvest before you. If the barns fill, build bigger ones to house all the spiritual crop. But as you receive a foretaste of eternal reward, remember what is often true: “I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” Do not be arrogant, but rather thankful, toward sowers.
Sowers, continue to plant, till, and seed the ground. Your work is crucial — whether you see the harvest in this life or not. You will someday. What you labor on is bigger than yourself. You do not see the fullness, but Jesus does not leave you ignorant of it: “Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.”
You will rejoice with the reaper over your shared harvest. Oh, to see the shocked look on some of your faces when you enter glory with what you think is a single plum, only to discover a whole orchard that grew from what you had sown. “Let us not grow weary of doing good,” dear sowers, “for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up” (Galatians 6:9). The reaper’s word is Now, the sower’s word is Someday, but heaven’s word is Together.
Desiring God