Wednesday

Related Verses
John 4:28-39 (29,34-38)
28 Then the woman left her waterpot and went away into the city, and said to the people,
29 Come, see a man who told me all that I have done. Is this not the Christ?
30 They went out of the city and came to Him.
31 In the meantime, the disciples urged Him, saying, Rabbi, eat.
32 But He said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about.
33 The disciples therefore said to one another, Has anyone brought Him anything to eat?
34 Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.
35 Do you not say that there are yet four months and then the harvest comes? Behold, I tell you, Lift up your eyes and look on the fields, for they are already white for harvest.
36 He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit unto eternal life, in order that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
37 For in this the saying is true, One sows and another reaps.
38 I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.
39 And many of the Samaritans from that city believed into Him because of the word of the woman who testified, He told me all that I have done.

Related Reading
Sowing
“He who reaps…gathers fruit unto eternal life, in order that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together…One sows and another reaps” (John 4:36-37).

The third expression for preaching the gospel is sowing. The word of the Lord’s gospel is the seed of life, and a person’s heart is like a field of earth for planting. When we preach the gospel to people, we are sowing the seed of the Lord’s gospel into the field of their hearts. When the seed of the gospel grows in their hearts, it can be harvested. Sometimes others sow, and we reap; sometimes we sow, and others reap. For example, a brother who is baptized today may have received a gospel tract that gave him an impression of the gospel five years ago in another place. Thus, the seed of the gospel, which was sown into him through the tract, was reaped and brought in by us five years later. Therefore, we should preach the gospel whenever we meet people and sow the seed of the gospel into their hearts so that there will be a harvest in due time (Crucial Truths in the Holy Scriptures, vol. 3, ch. 28, p. 503).

The Growth and Development of the Seed of the Kingdom
If we read the New Testament in this light, we shall see that the Triune God became a man. When this man, Jesus Christ, began to preach the gospel and teach the truth, He was sowing Himself into others. This means that His preaching of the gospel and His teaching of the truth were actually a sowing of Himself into those who heard Him. While He was preaching and teaching, He was sowing His word into His hearers. His word conveyed Himself into them. Hence, through His word He Himself as the God-man, the Triune God in humanity, was sown into His chosen people. Preaching and teaching were His way of sowing Himself as the seed of the kingdom. When God’s chosen people heard the word of this God-man and received it, they were actually receiving a wonderful Person, the One who is both the Triune God and a real man. This is what is recorded in the four Gospels.

The four Gospels reveal the Triune God incarnated. This God-man eventually came forth to sow Himself into God’s chosen people by preaching and teaching. When those who had been chosen by God heard His word and received it, they received the seed, the gene, of the kingdom. This seed, this gene, is the incarnated God, the Triune God in humanity. In the Gospels we have the sowing of this seed of the kingdom.

In the Acts we have the propagation and spreading of this sowing. In the Gospels we do have some spreading, first from one Sower to twelve sowers and then from twelve sowers to seventy sowers. But in Acts hundreds and even thousands of sowers were raised up. All these sowers were those who received the seed, the gene. By receiving the seed they became those who could then sow it into others. In this way we have the propagation of the sowing and of the seed (Life-study of Mark, msg. 15, pp. 134-135).