January 27, 2026 | Be Connected
Jesus Talks about the Spiritual Harvest
Scripture: John 4:27-38(NIV)
27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
31 Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”
33 Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?”
34 “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. 35 Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. 36 Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. 37 Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. 38 I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.”
Devotional
Jesus is on a roll. In yesterday’s passage (John 4:1-26) He not only spoke to an unmarried Samaritan woman (a cultural misstep for a Jewish man), He also told her that He was the Christ, and He had water for drinking that would cause her never to go thirsty again. Today, He tells His disciples, who are worried that Jesus hasn’t eaten, that His food is completing the work for which God sent Him.
Modern crop farming requires tremendous discipline. The ground must be turned, seeds planted, fertilized, nourished by rain and sunlight, and harvest collected within specific time windows. If any of the steps are delayed, missed, or applied in excess or underabundance, the yield can be diminished or ruined. While completing this work, a sophisticated farmer also must figure out how much of the crop to sell and at what price on the futures market before the first seed is planted. Guess wrong, and come harvest time, the farmer may be purchasing a lot of grain at market prices and giving away most of the profit for the year. A lack of adequate crop insurance can be a disaster in the event of a severe flood. Too much insurance can erode profits in the event of a “normal” year in terms of rain, sun, insects, and disease.
In the previous paragraph, I describe the mentality of the disciples when Jesus admonishes them in verse 35 of today’s passage. He says, “Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.” He is imploring them to think in terms of the spiritual and not the physical. This verse makes me think of another from Matthew 6:26 in which Jesus says, “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” By putting our faith in God, we are trusting Him to take care of both our physical and spiritual needs.
Verse 38 of today’s passage gives me hope. While I haven’t personally seen many people to whom I’ve witnessed come to Jesus, this verse reminds me that I can be both a sower and a reaper. If I work in the spiritual fields, I can either plant seeds in the sense that I introduce others to Christ, or I can reap the harvest in the sense of bringing them to conversion. Either way, work the fields!
Are there areas of your life that cause you to focus on the physical (or “worldly”) fields at the expense of the spiritual ones?
