Bobby Dagnel: Good seeing everyone.
Bobby Dagnel: We are, uh.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, you know, even when I was pastoring, I'd, uh, you know, first started out, you know, communion would always be something tacked on to the end of the service, but, uh, I always thought it was something of such a weight and importance that I really wanted the service to be built around that, uh, my messages and all that instead of just being an after the, after the fact, uh, event that we did.
Bobby Dagnel: And so, uh, this morning I think it's appropriate that, uh, we do the same as I'm, uh, sharing with you.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, about communion and this, uh, meal that the church, uh, has shared for over 2000 years together in community with one another.
Bobby Dagnel: Of course, it has its moorings, the Passover meal, uh, God's people.
Bobby Dagnel: And so much of what God has done with his people has been built around the meal, the common meal that is shared together.
Bobby Dagnel: Um.
Bobby Dagnel: I want to continue in that, in that vein, as we think about a communion meal as the people of God, as a community of faith, the, the enrichment of faith, the vividness that it brings to life.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, I wanna speak this morning on the subject of a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: A nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: If you have your Bible, a smart device, whatever it is you follow along with, I encourage you to open it.
Bobby Dagnel: Open your Bible to John chapter four and follow along with me as, uh, we explore verses 31 through 38 in this idea of a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: I, uh, I, I'm sad that I have to start off with some bad news, looking at some data, uh, from the Centers for Disease Control.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, the numbers don't look good for us.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, the latest data, and this is trending in a, in a negative direction as well, it's not getting any better, but the data shows that 42.8% of Americans are obese.
Bobby Dagnel: 32.5 are overweight.
Bobby Dagnel: That means over 75% of our population is either obese or overweight.
Bobby Dagnel: They link that to our diets, highly processed foods, uh, high fat diets, and a lack of AC exercise, but the real issue.
Bobby Dagnel: Is, is diet, nutrition, uh, our eating habits, because it doesn't matter how much you exercise, you could never outrun a diet, can you?
Bobby Dagnel: And so what, what is significant is what is it that we are using to fuel.
Bobby Dagnel: Our bodies.
Bobby Dagnel: You think about how much time in a day we spend foraging through our pantries, through our refrigerators, and we spend all day hungry.
Bobby Dagnel: We're always looking for the next meal.
Bobby Dagnel: What am I going to snack on?
Bobby Dagnel: And through the course of a day, uh, we have been hungry, we have eaten a lot, and yet our bodies are deprived nutritionally.
Bobby Dagnel: Those hunger pains that we get, the brain is sending signals to the body that what I need is nutrition.
Bobby Dagnel: Now we, we provide food, we all eat until we're satisfied.
Bobby Dagnel: But, but nutritionally, we never come to a place where we are satiated, where the nutritional needs of the body are, are satisfied.
Bobby Dagnel: And so we keep feeding it empty calories and we do so until we are full, but we are never satiated.
Bobby Dagnel: It nutritionally.
Bobby Dagnel: And so what the body longs for is nutrition, and that becomes the very thing, uh, that we deprive it from.
Bobby Dagnel: Well, the same thing happens spiritually.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, Jesus has set forth, and of course the word of God has set forth for us that, that, uh, have a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: To develop and to grow and to mature as a spiritual people.
Bobby Dagnel: Well, there's some things that need to be practiced.
Bobby Dagnel: It takes great intentionality.
Bobby Dagnel: You need to, you need to study the word of God.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, you need to join together with God's people in rhythmic, continual worship.
Bobby Dagnel: You need to pray.
Bobby Dagnel: You need to serve, you need to need to give all of these things or the disciplines that add to our spiritual wellness, our spiritual maturity and and development as the people of God.
Bobby Dagnel: Sadly, like our physical diets, we want to use substitutes, we want to use.
Bobby Dagnel: Fast food instead of going to church, perhaps in, in a rhythm, in a pattern, not forsaken, the abandoning of ourselves together, the writer of Hebrew says, which has become the habit of some.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, we go to church.
Bobby Dagnel: What, when, when it's convenient.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, instead of, instead of studying the word of God, instead of picking up the biblical text each day and immersing myself into the text with a prayerful attitude, uh, what sayeth the Lord.
Bobby Dagnel: To me, instead of knowing the word of God and understanding the word of God, uh, we, we, we buy the most popular book at the Christian bookstore, or we listen to our favorite podcaster.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, instead of having that dynamic relationship, and I would hope that we would understand this, is that when we are a part of a, of a local body of believers, uh, I believe that there is this mystical union between the, a pastor that God calls a congregation, that he serves as an under shepherd and the working of the Holy Spirit, that there is a triangle, uh, a dynamic.
Bobby Dagnel: There of God speaking through a pastor to an under shepherd, to a congregation at an appointed time, that the message you hear as a member of a congregation is the message that God's spirit has laid upon the heart of that under shepherd for you and his people for a time such as this.
Bobby Dagnel: And a podcaster can never do that.
Bobby Dagnel: Some favorite pastor off somewhere over on the west coast, he's going to speak a message that is, that in that dynamic is appropriate for his people in that time.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, but it's not necessarily a message that was for you in that dynamic that I just described.
Bobby Dagnel: And so we have to be careful about the fads.
Bobby Dagnel: We have to be careful about the trends.
Bobby Dagnel: We have to be popular, we have to be aware of, of, of, of avoiding that, which is just popular.
Bobby Dagnel: In the moment, I think we do well to hear the author of, of Hebrews writing in Hebrews chapter 13.
Bobby Dagnel: Let me read this to you in Hebrews chapter.
Bobby Dagnel: Hebrews chapter 13, Jesus, the writer of Hebrews would say something to this, to this very effect.
Bobby Dagnel: Remember those he said in verse seven.
Bobby Dagnel: Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Bobby Dagnel: Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings.
Bobby Dagnel: For it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods through which those who were occupied were not benefited.
Bobby Dagnel: Now the deeper life, the nutritionally rich life, as we are going to discover through the teachings of Jesus this morning, is that it comes from our service and our engagement, our obedient to the will of God and the purposes of God.
Bobby Dagnel: That's why Jesus would, uh, would offer these verses, listen to them in verses 31 and 32 regarding food.
Bobby Dagnel: Now remember the context of this, of this passage in John four.
Bobby Dagnel: It comes on the heels of Jesus' engagement with the Samaritan woman, the woman at the well, and he's talked to this woman about, about living waters that that lead.
Bobby Dagnel: To life.
Bobby Dagnel: And in that, in verse eight, we know that his disciples have gone to the city to get food.
Bobby Dagnel: And now on the heels of this conversation about living water, Jesus has something to say to his disciples about food.
Bobby Dagnel: And meanwhile, the disciples were urging him saying, rabbi, eat.
Bobby Dagnel: But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about.
Bobby Dagnel: You see what these, what these disciples were thinking about and what we so often think about is just the moment.
Bobby Dagnel: It's just the need of, of the moment, the, the immediate.
Bobby Dagnel: Gratification, but what Jesus is going to do, just as water became a metaphor to talk to the Samaritan woman about living waters, waters, which she might partake and never thirst again.
Bobby Dagnel: He's going to speak to these disciples about a food that they do not know.
Bobby Dagnel: It becomes a metaphor for thinking about a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: That's what I wanna speak to this morning.
Bobby Dagnel: I, I want to talk about four things from, from this passage that I think make for a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: I'm, of course, speaking in the spiritual realm, in the life of faith, but the same intentionality, the same deliberateness, the same forethought that it takes to planting our physical meals.
Bobby Dagnel: If I'm going to, if I'm going to have a nutritional diet.
Bobby Dagnel: If I'm going to, to, to avoid the fad diets, if I'm going to avoid the, the processed foods, the packaged foods, if I'm going to have a, uh, if I'm going to have a good, healthy nutritional diet, uh, it takes intentionality, doesn't it?
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus is going to say the same thing is true in the life of faith, what God desires to accomplish in my life and yours.
Bobby Dagnel: It's not gonna be done by the fashionable.
Bobby Dagnel: It's not going to be done by the trendy or the popular, but here's the things that that will characterize a nutritionally rich existence as the people of God.
Bobby Dagnel: The first thing notice in verses 31 through 34 is that a nutritionally rich existence has a sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: But if I'm going to have a nutritionally rich existence in my, in my communion with the father, in my walk with the Lord, then I'm going to have to have a, a vocational sense of my existence.
Bobby Dagnel: Listen to these verses again.
Bobby Dagnel: Meanwhile, the disciples were urging him saying, rabbi, eat.
Bobby Dagnel: But he said to them, I have food to eat that you do not know about.
Bobby Dagnel: So the disciples were saying to one another, no one brought him anything to eat, did he?
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus said to them, my food.
Bobby Dagnel: That is what brings wellness purpose, meaning what brings nutri nutritional enrichment to my life.
Bobby Dagnel: My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his word.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus is saying, this is what charges my batteries.
Bobby Dagnel: This is what gives me a sense of purpose and meaning.
Bobby Dagnel: This, this is what enriches my life.
Bobby Dagnel: It, it's doing the will of the Father.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus had a sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: Now there's a difference between an occupation and a vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: What we should all embrace as followers of Christ is we should have a sense of vocation about our existence, about our daily lives.
Bobby Dagnel: That's different from an occupation.
Bobby Dagnel: An occupation, uh, is to have a task.
Bobby Dagnel: You, you occupy space at a place where you've hired on, you, you, you've, uh, you're occupying space, doing a task for which you were hired so that you might receive a paycheck.
Bobby Dagnel: And that's an occupation.
Bobby Dagnel: That's not a vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: Vocation is to do everything that you do with a sense of calling.
Bobby Dagnel: It's the sense of calling that God has upon your life.
Bobby Dagnel: You have answered the call of God in your life as a follower of Christ.
Bobby Dagnel: His spirit prompted you, his his spirit convicted you.
Bobby Dagnel: That spirit is calling you unto himself and you responded to that calling.
Bobby Dagnel: And out of that calling, every facet of your life is impacted.
Bobby Dagnel: You see, in the study of scripture, I've never understood this separation between the sacred and the secular.
Bobby Dagnel: For a child of God, everything is sacred.
Bobby Dagnel: Where, where you and I find ourselves, where our feet are on a daily basis because Christ dwells in you.
Bobby Dagnel: That is a sacred place.
Bobby Dagnel: These are sacred moments.
Bobby Dagnel: These are sacred opportunities.
Bobby Dagnel: These are sacred interactions that I have in some of the most me.
Bobby Dagnel: What appear to be the most meaningless of places.
Bobby Dagnel: Do you have that sense of vocation?
Bobby Dagnel: You know, when I hear people talk about how miserable they are.
Bobby Dagnel: At school, at work, whatever it is, whatever that thing is, it takes up the greatest portion of their day, whether it's the work, the school, whatever, and they say, you know, I just, I, I, I really dislike doing this.
Bobby Dagnel: Well, when I hear a believer say that, all I'm hearing is that you have no sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: Because if I have a sense of vocation, then any task that, that might seem so redundant, any, any task that, that, any existence that seem, that would appear to others to be just a grind while others around me are saying, you know, I really don't like it here.
Bobby Dagnel: I'm just trying to get through the day and get to my, get to my paycheck.
Bobby Dagnel: With a sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: I'm understanding that in my calling, I'm doing my, my task, whatever I'm doing, I'm doing it under the Lord and not under men.
Bobby Dagnel: I'm seeking to do this thing in a way that brings honor and glory to him.
Bobby Dagnel: That sense of vocation, it impacts my, my role as an employee, as as a student, as a husband, as a father.
Bobby Dagnel: There is no arena of life that goes untouched.
Bobby Dagnel: Is not impacted by that sense of vocational call of God upon our lives.
Bobby Dagnel: We see it in the life of Jesus.
Bobby Dagnel: Listen to the words of verse 27.
Bobby Dagnel: At this point, as disciples came, they were amazed that he had been speaking with a woman.
Bobby Dagnel: Yet no one said, what do you seek?
Bobby Dagnel: Why do you speak?
Bobby Dagnel: With her because he had a sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: Everyone else would dismiss a Samaritan, wouldn't they think?
Bobby Dagnel: In our day and time we under, we failed to appreciate completely the, the prejudice and the tension that existed between the Jews and, and the Samaritans.
Bobby Dagnel: I don't really have time for all the historical background of that, but I can frame it in a modern context.
Bobby Dagnel: You, let's imagine the people group that you despise most.
Bobby Dagnel: I know our temptation is, oh, I don't have a group like that, pastor.
Bobby Dagnel: I, I'm much too holy for that.
Bobby Dagnel: No, no.
Bobby Dagnel: Let, let's get past all that.
Bobby Dagnel: Let's, let's just imagine the people group that you really don't care for, for whom you know in your heart you have a prejudice.
Bobby Dagnel: Multiply that times 10, multiply that, whether it's hate, just dis disregard or whatever, a dismissal of that people group.
Bobby Dagnel: Multiply that by 10 and only then do you begin to understand the prejudice that existed in that moment.
Bobby Dagnel: They cannot fathom.
Bobby Dagnel: They cannot imagine why Jesus would be having a conversation with a Samaritan.
Bobby Dagnel: Woman, see Jesus understood.
Bobby Dagnel: In this sense of vocation that I have, every place is sacred.
Bobby Dagnel: Every person is sacred with whom I interact with a sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, God is using in the process of possibly drawing others unto him.
Bobby Dagnel: I'd ask you, have you come to that place where you have a sense of vocation about, about your life, an understanding of your faith and your relationship with the father, and in that sense of vocational call that that leaves no stone unturned that impacts every arena of your life.
Bobby Dagnel: Because Jesus says it is.
Bobby Dagnel: It is in this context, doing the will of the Father, wherever I am, even in Samaria.
Bobby Dagnel: In this, I find enrichment and fulfillment.
Bobby Dagnel: Everything becomes important.
Bobby Dagnel: Everything becomes significant.
Bobby Dagnel: 'cause it's an opportunity to glorify the father and to showcase him and to show the fruit of the spirit, the spirit of Christ in a way that others may not.
Bobby Dagnel: People that would never enter a church, they will watch you, they'll watch me.
Bobby Dagnel: The second thing that makes for a nutritional existence, nutritionally rich existence, is not only is it, is it an existence that is vocational?
Bobby Dagnel: But it's also one that is insatiable.
Bobby Dagnel: Insatiable.
Bobby Dagnel: It's never satisfied.
Bobby Dagnel: Notice, let's just begin in, in verse 32, but he said to them, I, I have food.
Bobby Dagnel: Remember, they've asked the question about food.
Bobby Dagnel: Did somebody feed him that we didn't see or know about?
Bobby Dagnel: You know, Jesus says here in verse 32, I have food to eat that you do not know.
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah, that's, that's difficult for them to understand.
Bobby Dagnel: We've, we've heard your teachings, we've heard everything that you've had to say, oh, we've, we've seen your, your miracles.
Bobby Dagnel: Well, they, they can imagine that, that there's more to know that there's, that there's more to understand.
Bobby Dagnel: And of course we understand they have a lot.
Bobby Dagnel: We know from hindsight there's a lot more that's coming, a lot more that, that they have failed to comprehend and understand at this point.
Bobby Dagnel: But what we see in verse 33 is that these disciples have taken Jesus far too, literally, he says, so the disciples were saying to one another, no one has brought him anything to eat.
Bobby Dagnel: Did he Jesus speaking about food, they're, they're thinking literally about food.
Bobby Dagnel: We see that Jesus is misunderstood numerous times in the Gospels, don't we?
Bobby Dagnel: Where people took him literally where he was just using something literal as a spiritual metaphor.
Bobby Dagnel: Nicodemus Jesus in that conversation about being born again.
Bobby Dagnel: Nicodemus was, was taking him literal, how is, how can one be born again?
Bobby Dagnel: He's thinking in terms of spiritual birth.
Bobby Dagnel: The Jews, when Jesus would speak about the temple, they were thinking about a literal temple.
Bobby Dagnel: The Samaritan woman thought he was just talking about water, but Jesus had this unique way, none bearing here.
Bobby Dagnel: Of course, uh, it's nonetheless true here, but Jesus had that way of taking the literal.
Bobby Dagnel: That which people could see and observe, he took, could take those and he could fashion them into something, uh, that, that had bearing upon their spiritual life and their understanding of the father.
Bobby Dagnel: But what I want us to see here is that there's always more.
Bobby Dagnel: To be understood, always more to be pursued in the life of faith, never reaching a place of being satisfied.
Bobby Dagnel: Listen to verse 34.
Bobby Dagnel: We see it even in the life of Jesus.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus said to them, my food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
Bobby Dagnel: If you could see that in, in the, in the original language, in the Greek text, the verb tense is continual.
Bobby Dagnel: Ongoing.
Bobby Dagnel: This isn't a one time deal.
Bobby Dagnel: This isn't past tense.
Bobby Dagnel: He said, my food is to do the will, verb tense, continual, ongoing.
Bobby Dagnel: My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
Bobby Dagnel: It is something that, that is continual and ongoing.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus used the same word on the cross.
Bobby Dagnel: He says it is finished.
Bobby Dagnel: Wasn't really finished though, was it?
Bobby Dagnel: The work of Christ, the work of the Spirit continues on through the body of Christ.
Bobby Dagnel: The church Jesus had no sense of having arrived and knowing the will of God and doing the will of God.
Bobby Dagnel: You see it, it makes for a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: When I continue to hunger and thirst, never being satisfied with what I've experienced, what I've known, what I've understood previously, who can know the mind and the heart of God, it creates an insatiable appetite.
Bobby Dagnel: And leads to a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: A third thing God would have us notice about this kind of existence is that it has a providential awareness That shouldn't surprise us.
Bobby Dagnel: Do not say Jesus said.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus said, do you not say he's offering a little proverbial statement here?
Bobby Dagnel: Do you not say there are yet four months?
Bobby Dagnel: And then comes.
Bobby Dagnel: Harvest.
Bobby Dagnel: Behold I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields.
Bobby Dagnel: And they, and they are white for harvest already.
Bobby Dagnel: He who reaps is receiving wages and is gathering fruit for E, for life.
Bobby Dagnel: Eternal so that he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
Bobby Dagnel: Now, I don't want you to be confused by this statement here in, in verse 35, what the point that Jesus is making to his disciples and to us, that you're behind.
Bobby Dagnel: You're already behind.
Bobby Dagnel: We are already behind in what we should be doing and what we should be accomplishing for the kingdom of God.
Bobby Dagnel: Now, what Jesus says here in, in verse 35, it's apparently some little parochial, um, uh, some colloquialism, some little local phrase that, that maybe these disciples were, were familiar with, because nowhere else do you find that little proverbial statement.
Bobby Dagnel: It's found nowhere else in extent literature.
Bobby Dagnel: We find it nowhere else.
Bobby Dagnel: I think the closest thing that, that we could understand and what he's saying here, do you not say they're yet four months, and then comes the harvest.
Bobby Dagnel: Behold, I say to you, lift up your li eyes.
Bobby Dagnel: Look on the field.
Bobby Dagnel: They're white for harvest.
Bobby Dagnel: That first clause there, they are yet four months, and then comes the harvest.
Bobby Dagnel: You think you have time and be patient.
Bobby Dagnel: Phrase we would be familiar with is Rome wasn't built in a day.
Bobby Dagnel: Don't get in a big rush.
Bobby Dagnel: Rome wasn't built in a day.
Bobby Dagnel: That's not what he's saying in regard to the kingdom of God.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus is saying to his disciples, this doesn't need to be your attitude, this attitude that people have about agriculture with this agricultural truth.
Bobby Dagnel: There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest.
Bobby Dagnel: That is not a spiritual truth.
Bobby Dagnel: He's saying for us there should be a, a sense of urgency.
Bobby Dagnel: We, we don't have the privilege of delay between sowing and reaping and harvesting as, as in a agricultural metaphor.
Bobby Dagnel: No.
Bobby Dagnel: The calling that we have and what we are called to our mission there, there's an urgency.
Bobby Dagnel: Look, the fields are white.
Bobby Dagnel: Under harvest play on this.
Bobby Dagnel: I think that's happening.
Bobby Dagnel: That could be easily missed, you know?
Bobby Dagnel: Um, wheat is not necessarily white when it's hard.
Bobby Dagnel: It has a golden hue when, when wheated is, is ready for, for the harvest.
Bobby Dagnel: Now there is a, there is a rot, right?
Bobby Dagnel: I guess that would, would appear, uh, uh, that would appear white in, uh, appearance if it was left in the field too long and not harvest it.
Bobby Dagnel: I really don't think that's it.
Bobby Dagnel: I think what Jesus is describing here.
Bobby Dagnel: Has to be connected back.
Bobby Dagnel: And this is always good biblical interpretation.
Bobby Dagnel: Uh, our tendency is, is to, is to lift a text out of its context and just make it apply to whatever we want to make it apply to.
Bobby Dagnel: But good biblical exegesis always requires context and, and so I think good biblical acts of Jesus and understanding of what Jesus is describing here requires of us to go back to what he was dealing with previously.
Bobby Dagnel: The Samaritan woman, the miracle that, that she experienced, she went back after putting down her water pot, verse 38, verse 28, went to the city, said to the man, come see a man who told me all things that I've done.
Bobby Dagnel: This is not the Christ is it.
Bobby Dagnel: And all of those men, they, they went out of the city.
Bobby Dagnel: And we're coming to him now.
Bobby Dagnel: I think as Jesus is dealing with these disciples and their understanding of, of this kind of food for which they should truly long for, I think he looks across that field and he sees the men of Samaria coming from that Samaritan city wearing their white robes look.
Bobby Dagnel: Here's your opportunity.
Bobby Dagnel: A people that you would dismiss, a people that now you, you are understanding that God is going in the, in the redemptive purposes of God, he is even going to save the Samaritans.
Bobby Dagnel: Well, if that's true, uh, listen, it's gonna take a long time.
Bobby Dagnel: It's gonna truly take a work of God for the Samaritans to come to faith.
Bobby Dagnel: I know they have no interest in the things.
Bobby Dagnel: Of God.
Bobby Dagnel: If God's gonna save him, he's gonna have to do it himself.
Bobby Dagnel: Jesus is saying, no, there's an urgency about this moment.
Bobby Dagnel: The fields are wide into the harvest.
Bobby Dagnel: They're coming.
Bobby Dagnel: This is the opportunity.
Bobby Dagnel: Now, he realized the importance of these, these kinds of providential moments.
Bobby Dagnel: You see the awareness that we ought to have in our, in our existence as the people of God.
Bobby Dagnel: Every one of us in the truest sense are missionaries that we're, where our feet are planted and at, at any course of the day, we are the presence of Christ in that moment.
Bobby Dagnel: I have a sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: In any moment, I have an awareness, uh, that, that any encounter could be a, a providential encounter.
Bobby Dagnel: And to exist that way, the way that Jesus did just, uh, the routines and the highways and the by waves of everyday life and how he could turn those moments into something for the kingdom.
Bobby Dagnel: Oh, don't, you know, it's a, it's a nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: It's what gives meaning and purpose to life far beyond anything, this world.
Bobby Dagnel: Can offer us in its temporal awareness.
Bobby Dagnel: Which brings me to a final element of this nutritionally rich existence.
Bobby Dagnel: Not only is it vocational and in and and insatiable and providential, but it's also communal.
Bobby Dagnel: Notice it's communal acts aspect in verse 37.
Bobby Dagnel: For in, in this case, the saying is true.
Bobby Dagnel: One sows and another.
Bobby Dagnel: Don't, don't ever underestimate your providential moments.
Bobby Dagnel: Don't ever underestimate these providential encounters.
Bobby Dagnel: These men from the Samaritan city are coming.
Bobby Dagnel: Don't ever underestimate the don't, don't think that that, because you don't, don't dismiss them saying they have no interest in things of God.
Bobby Dagnel: The woman told them about it.
Bobby Dagnel: They're coming to see.
Bobby Dagnel: Here's your opportunity for, in this case, the saying is true.
Bobby Dagnel: One soaps, one soaps in another.
Bobby Dagnel: Reaps I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored.
Bobby Dagnel: Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.
Bobby Dagnel: You've got to see yourselves as a part of a community experience of what God is doing, what God is accomplishing through his people, the totality of his people.
Bobby Dagnel: Not just you at the brochure on a street corner, but how is God going to use my encounter with some individual that I may not even know And your encounter with that person, uh, 200 miles from here, a person that you don't even know who can even imagine how God is going to use the communal aspect of his people.
Bobby Dagnel: To bring individuals into a life and relationship with him, that my witness and your witness, God uses all that.
Bobby Dagnel: You know, only time in eternity will measure all of this.
Bobby Dagnel: Joining in another man's work.
Bobby Dagnel: I mean, that's the very thing John and Peter did in Acts chapter eight.
Bobby Dagnel: You know, Philip was already working among the Samaritans.
Bobby Dagnel: That Samaritan revival there in Acts chapter eight.
Bobby Dagnel: Well, John and Peter came and, and validated that God's spirit is moving upon.
Bobby Dagnel: Yes.
Bobby Dagnel: Even the Samaritans bill was already working.
Bobby Dagnel: Collectively, that's what we're doing as a community.
Bobby Dagnel: Of faith, it's understanding who I am, vocationally.
Bobby Dagnel: It's understanding how my life is a part of the providential purposes of God.
Bobby Dagnel: And when I have this understanding, and all believers have this understanding, there is a communal quality that comes to bear on this great salvation that God is accomplishing.
Bobby Dagnel: So you're, you're here this morning.
Bobby Dagnel: I'm, I'm standing here this morning because of an untold number of people that would impact my life.
Bobby Dagnel: Could've been your grandparents, your parents, some pastors, some Sunday school teachers, some classmates, some coworker that was a believer, and you watched and you observed, you asked questions.
Bobby Dagnel: In a way, unbeknownst to you, this community of believers God used in providential ways, in this faith that is yours now that that goes back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to the judges and the kings, the disciples to us here today.
Bobby Dagnel: We're all here because of of others, because of how God used a community of people to accomplish his salvific purposes.
Bobby Dagnel: Alex Haley name, you're familiar with the author of Roots.
Bobby Dagnel: Alex Haley was a successful author, writer.
Bobby Dagnel: He said whenever he.
Bobby Dagnel: He said, whenever I started becoming a little too full of myself, being pleased with who I am and what I accomplished as Alex Haley, when I would feel pride welling up in me, he said, I would sit in my office and I would look at a, a picture that I had framed on my wall, and it was always very humbling.
Bobby Dagnel: It was a picture.
Bobby Dagnel: Of a turtle on a fence post.
Bobby Dagnel: It was a reminder that if you ever see a turtle on a fence post, someone put it there because turtles don't climb fence posts.
Bobby Dagnel: We are where we are because we stand now on the shoulders of others.
Bobby Dagnel: God has used in a communal way to be a part of his salvific purposes.
Bobby Dagnel: You and I are here because of others.
Bobby Dagnel: I wonder as we sit here and talk about this, who will come to faith because of you?
Bobby Dagnel: Who will come to faith because of you.
Bobby Dagnel: Now that, that's a question for which there is no answer.
Bobby Dagnel: 'cause I think time Eter eternity.
Bobby Dagnel: I think you and I are going to be shocked when our life comes to an end and we are immediately in the presence of God when then we shall know fully as we have been fully known.
Bobby Dagnel: When no longer are we seeing through a glass dark lake.
Bobby Dagnel: Yeah, but now face to face, I think you and I are going to be shocked, never imagining the impact and the influence that we had in others coming to faith that we can't even imagine.
Bobby Dagnel: See, when you, when you and I have that sense of vocation.
Bobby Dagnel: When we have that sense of providential importance, when I have this insatiable appetite for the things of God, when I understand the importance of my presence, of how God uses my presence in any moment of the day to influence others, and together we have this communal impact, well it's then it's then.
Bobby Dagnel: You and I have a nutritionally rich existence as the people of God.
Bobby Dagnel: Let me have a word of prayer, and as I'm praying we'll pass out our communal elements.
Bobby Dagnel: Our Father, how grateful we.