That work that Jesus is talking about is the business of saving souls, furthering the gospel, and advancing the kingdom. It’s often hindered by procrastination. You see that in John 4:35. “Do you not say, ‘There is yet four months and then comes harvest’?” Procrastination. In farming oftentimes things it’s about that much time four months, 120-day corn you know from planting to harvest and maturity. And so he says don’t say that don’t think that way that…
Maybe sometime it’ll be in the future, there’ll be time to see a harvest in the future.
Sometimes I’ll be able to be used by God,
maybe sometime I’ll take on this and memorize the book of the Ephesians.
Maybe sometime in the future I’ll do this or that.
Procrastination is a very big thing in hindering us from doing the work of Christ in the business of souls. The Lord had an urgency about Him. I must be about my father’s business. And again and John 9, we must work the works of him sent me and accomplish his work. Oh, there’s. It’s so easy to have so many excuses. I can remember for myself after I resigned my work with DeKalb Company and went for eight months up in Canada with Keith McLeod. Then I came back. Living at home was driving a gravel truck for Vaylard Zupke. It was just 20 miles from the town in which I grew up. The farm community where I grew up in just 20 miles away. And I thought at different times about going over there… I never did get over there. And now I look back and I wish that I had just started out from where I grew up and gone right up and down every gravel road, combed them, plowed them, gone to every door and knocked on every door and just sad what this woman said, “Come, see a man…” Come see a man that saved me, that told me that everything that I did that dealt with my sin…come see a man, I have been saved! All that I had to done to say that go from door to door. Now most of them are dead and I’m afraid perished in hell.
At the time I was thinking, well, sometime in the future, some I don’t have a ministry yet. So sometime in the future when I have a ministry, then I can do things like that. It was wrong thinking. Yet, four more months… Then I’ll do it. No, right now. Now is the time, right? If I just started right there, it would have been my ministry right there, you see. May the Lord help us to not be hindered by procrastination. Often the hardest part of any job, whether it’s prayer or studying your math, is just getting the book out and getting started. Haven’t you seen that so many times? Why this job wasn’t as hard as I thought it’d be, the hardest part was just getting started and getting over that ‘yet four months’ mentality. The Lord says, Lift up your eyes here in verse 35 Here’s what you say. Now I say to you: Lift up your eyes. Look on the fields. They’re white. They’re ready. They look at them coming. People are all around. Souls are everywhere. Needs are everywhere. You’ve got the truth. Don’t say, “Yet four months.” Come on, right now. Lift up your eyes. Get a vision. Go to another country like Susan did if you’ve got to. And see the masses of humanity that have never heard the name of Jesus, that are still thinking that baptism saves them or whatever like that, we have the truth, we’ve got the answers. The world waits. Oh, Lord, here I am. Send me, use me. You see? Don’t take this idea of “yet four months.”
The time is going by so quickly. So quickly. Just the other day we planted a cantaloupe patch and now here it’s all over. The harvest is over. The summer’s gone. Just like that. You see, Jeremiah says the summer is over the harvest is ended and we’re still not saved. So quickly our youth goes by. I can remember when I was driving that gravel truck for Vaylard I was 25 years old, standing there on a pile of dirt waiting for the loader to come or something. And here I am, 25. Old Carl was riding with me, Vaylard’s dad. He was 75. Boy, there’s a lot of years ahead of me. I’m 25. He’s 75. But just like that, here I am at age 56, where did it go? What happened? And you see, I remember when I was converted, I, I kept hearing other people say the time is short, our life is short, time is brief, it’s fleeting, fleeting, fleeting. And I remember different times purposing and in my own mind, “I’m not going to…” I’m going to try to redeem the time to the best of my ability and not have regrets when I come to the end. But it doesn’t matter how hard you try, it still happens anyway. It still goes by so fast and you feel like you could have done, should have done, so much more.
This excerpt is from the full sermon, “The Work of Christ”.
