#1: We Reap Much We Did Not Sow Series

Ever hear of something called “jogging in a jug”? “Jogging in a Jug” is a concoction of 4 parts grape juice, 4 parts apple juice, and 1 part apple cider vinegar. Yum, yum! It’s a folk remedy; a kind of “Drano” for your arteries. Supposedly, two ounces a day of this stuff and your insides will be as slick and clean as a whistle. Now, I don’t know if it works. It’s never been scientifically proven to do anything except cause you to make an awful face when you drink it. But wouldn’t it be great if it did? Just the name sounds appealing: “Jogging in a jug.” Wouldn’t it be great if you could gain all the benefits of jogging without actually having to exercise! If you could lower your cholesterol and improve your health without having to strap on your Nikes and “just do it”. If instead, you could “just drink it”? No getting up before dawn to drive to the gym; no hours of pain on the Stairmaster. Just a shot glass of vinegar and it’s “please pass the Krispy doughnuts!”

Take another example. It used to be that if you ate junk food, you got fat. Now, we have Olestra, a fat substitute, so we can eat greasy potato chips and ice cream to our heart’s content without raising our cholesterol. Over the years, we’ve developed a multitude of artificial sweeteners – cyclamates, saccharin, aspartame – so we can drink all the sodas we want without rotting our teeth and expanding our middles. And if you do happen to eat something with actual fat or calories, you don’t need to go to the gym to lose weight. All that sweating and huffing and puffing is so 80’s. Now, you just make an appointment with your friendly local liposuctionist, and for a couple of thousand dollars, he’ll suck that fat right out.

In short, what we’re constantly trying to do is repeal the law of sowing and reaping, sever the connection between action and consequence. Not just with eating and drinking, but in every area of life. It’s a universal human urge: people to want to enjoy the benefits without paying the price.

Now, while you may be able to reverse the consequences of overeating, there’s at least one area of life where the law of sowing and reaping always applies. And that’s in our spiritual life. Our character, our relationship with God, our relationships with one another, these are ruled by the law of sowing and reaping. It’s part of the moral fabric of the universe. This law can’t be overturned by drinking vinegar. And so the way of wisdom is not to war against it, but to understand it and live by it and benefit from it. Ignoring the law of sowing and reaping only leads to sorrow and regret. What we need to do is respond to it in a way that’s spiritually healthy and pleasing to God.

Someone has said "As ye sow, so shall ye reap, unless of course you are an amateur gardener." This statement of jest reveals a great deal more of truth than we might like to admit. When it comes to applying God’s Word to our lives we are amateurs at best.

The prophet Hosea identifies our problem. Hosea 4:6: “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being priest for Me; Because you have forgotten the law of your God, I also will forget your children.”

Throughout the Bible the agricultural terms of sowing, reaping and harvest are used as illustrations for the blessings and cursings that come to us in life.

With our lives and society becoming less agrarian we have lost touch with the reality of sowing and reaping. The concept of "sowing and reaping" my be foreign and outdated to many and, but that does not remove us from the Laws of the Harvest.

They are seven in number, with each stemming from God’s eternal Word.

• Law 1 We reap much we did not sow

• Law 2 We reap the same in kind as we sow

• Law 3 We reap in a different season than when we sow

• Law 4 We reap more than we sow

• Law 5 We reap in proportion as we sow

• Law 6 We reap the full harvest of the good only if we persevere; the evil comes to harvest on its own

• Law 7 We cannot do anything about last year’s harvest, but we can about this year’s

Each of these laws are based upon the single law of sowing and reaping. "For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap." Each of these laws bring a ledger book into our lives. Upon the pages we can see the line item entries of our lives. They represent what we have sown. To the right we find two columns titled plus and minus. These tell the positives and negatives of our sowing. It is called reaping the results. These laws carry a measure of judgment as well as blessing.