1. Fallow Fields or Fields Ripe for Harvest?

2. We’ve been looking at areas of our lives where the gospel has not yet taken firm root – areas that have gone fallow and lay unfruitful.
The application to us spiritually is that we may have similar fallow ground in our own lives.
We should survey the ground a little to test for these unfruitful areas and break new ground in these areas.
Today, we’ll look at this same theme – breaking new ground – with an external investigation of our fallow ground.

3. One of the consistent concerns I often hear from Christians is that our culture seems to be quickly bottoming out.
We often look back to a “golden age” – a “better” time as a reference point.
We are experiencing a shift in culture, morality and ethos in our world right now.
We tend to look at the state of the world and conclude that the fields of this world have been let go fallow and are producing nothing of value.
There is some truth in this understanding, however, Jesus in particular seems to indicate another equally present reality.

4. John 4: The Woman at the Well
“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. 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 ... Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor. “
QUESTION: Does Christ see fallow fields or fields ripe for harvesting?

5. If you were to choose a place in Christ’s context to illustrate a once fertile field now gone fallow, you might easily choose Sychar.
The town of Sychar was located at the foot of Mount Gerezim in Samaria.
For thousands of years, the area around Sychar was a spiritually significant and fruitful area.
Over issues regarding the rightful location of the Temple, this region was viewed as an area of apostasy.
To the Jew, it became a spiritually dead and barren place, a field long gone fallow; a place and a people who were spiritually dangerous.
Yet in looking upon this people long deemed spiritually vacant and unproductive, Christ sees fields ripe for harvest.

6. Similar “visual dilemmas” exist in scripture, occurring in relation to both people and places, whereby others deem them to be barren and unfruitful.
Abram and Sarai (Genesis 11)
The Exploits of Caleb and Joshua (Numbers 13-14)
By viewing the fields as barren and fallow, many were denied God’s blessing.
Christ’s Life (Matthew 13:53-57 and John 1:46)

7. If fruitfulness is not related to the things we often think it is, then to what is it related?
If God is at work in our lives, then we will see our lives bear fruit. Likewise, if God is at work in a people or a place, then despite appearances that people or place will be fruitful.
“I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)
Without Jesus, all fields are fallow and barren. But when God is involved in the equation, multiplication should be expected.
In each circumstance we’ve looked at, areas or people deemed fallow or barren are revealed as fruitful because of God’s presence and activity.

8. Perhaps the fields of our world aren’t quite as barren as we might think.
If Christ could look on an oppositional and spiritually vacant people and see ripened fields, perhaps we need to take another look at the oppositional and spiritually vacant world around us.
It is helpful for us to see ourselves as exiles living in a foreign land.
As Christ followers, we truthfully belong to another kingdom; our allegiance is to another King, one not of this world, yet we live here in a seemingly oppositional kingdom.

9. God spoke words of encouragement and direction as to how the people of Israel ought to live when they found themselves within a similar circumstance.
“This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” 
(Jeremiah 29:4-13)

10. God is breaking new ground all around us.
The fields are ripe for harvest and the Spirit of God is encouraging us to be active in finding out where He is most obviously at work and then be bold in jumping on board in what God is already doing.
We must experience a spiritual opening of our eyes to “see” God more clearly and understand more fully His will for our individual lives and our corporate life as a church.
“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” (Ephesians 1:18-19)