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.
So as we head into this new year, let us be encouraged to take God’s Word in hand and heart and begin to "sow to the Spirit" that we might reap a great harvest of life to come. This plows the ground work for the first Law of the Harvest, "We reap much we did not sow."
John 4:37-38 "For in this the saying is true: ’One sows and another reaps.’ 38 "I sent you to reap that for which you have not labored; others have labored, and you have entered into their labors." We reap much we did not sow. We are the benefactors of the fruit for which we have not worked for.
I. Positive Side of the Column
On the positive side of the ledger each of us have received an abundance of blessings for which we have done nothing to earn. Jesus spoke of God’s care of the birds of the air who neither "sowing or reaping" to illustrate those times in our lives we do not sow, but we reap. (Matthew 6:25-34)
A. Reaping Good From Others
It would not take us long to begin to list the benefits we have received from other people.
1. Parents: Starting with our parents we have all received good to which we did not labor.
2. Friends: We have friends who have graced our lives with gifts both tangible and intangible, not because of what we have done, but because they are our friends.
3. Freedom: We are recipients of the freedom in this land of America to which many of us did nothing to secure.
B. Reaping Good From God
Yes, we have all received the good of others to which we should be thankful. Oh but let us not forget the goodness we have received from the hand of God. 2
1. Salvation: Man is the recipient of God’s unearnable favor. John 3:16 speaks of God’s gift to us. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
It is the Apostle Paul who assures us we have done nothing to deserve such a great harvest to the soul of our lives. Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.
2. Daily grace: God in His grace blesses all people. Matthew 5:45b " for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. Every good gift we enjoy comes from God.
James 1:17-18 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. 18 Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. We reap much from the positive side of the ledger.
II. Negative Side of the Column
Within the ledger is the negative side. We sometimes reap the bad of others. Applying the lesson of the garden, "I did not plant weeds, but my garden was full of them!"
A. Reaping the Sin of Adam
We all reap the sin of Adam and we pass that along to our children. Bad habits and traits are passed along, as well as the sin nature. The sinful images, ideas and inconsistencies of others often produce a bad harvest of character traits within each of us. However just as we can reject the blessings of others we can and must reject the negative others place in our lives (traits and habits), so as to not pass them along to our children, family and friends.
Exodus 34:6-7 And the LORD passed before him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, 7 "keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children to the third and the fourth generation."
B. Reaping the Sin of the world
Matthew 4:7-9; Matthew 16:25-27; I John 2:14-16
A fly was buzzing along one morning when he saw a lawn mower someone had left out in their front yard. He flew over and sat on the handle, watching the children going down the sidewalk on their way to school. One little boy tripped on a crack and fell, spilling his lunch on the sidewalk. He picked himself up, put his lunch back in the bag and went on. But he missed a piece of bologna. The fly had not eaten that morning and he sure was hungry. So he flew down and started eating the bologna. In fact he ate so much that he could not fly, so he waddled across the sidewalk, across the lawn, up the wheel of the lawn mower, up the handle, and sat there resting and watching the children. There was still some bologna laying there on the sidewalk.
He was really stuffed, but that baloney sure did look good. Finally temptation got the best of him and he jumped off the handle of the lawn mower to fly over to the baloney. But alas he was too full to fly and he went splat!!, killing him instantly. The moral of the story: Don’t fly off the handle when you are full of baloney.
There’s a dark side to us, that’s as reckless as the fly. It does not matter what the costs are, you just got to have it. Humanity is like that, so full of baloney, they can’t see it and they fly off the handle, thinking they can handle it all, and be satisfied only to end up splat.
III. Application: Sow what is Good
Yes, we all reap much we did not sow. But that is not all we must take away from this first law of the harvest. In this law a 3-Dimensional call is extended.
A Call to Do Good
We need to being doing good while we can. "Do we realize the far-reaching implications of our choices on the lives of others—children, family members, co-workers, friends?" (J. Hampton Keathley III)
Matthew 5:44-45; Galatians 6:10; 1 Timothy 6:18-19; James 4:17
B. A Call To Love
Matthew 5:43-48
Through loving others we plant the seeds of love to be harvested in another person’s life. We need to live as though love were the greatest, for it is.
C. A Call to Wisdom
The scriptures tell us that wisdom calls aloud outside in the streets for man to pursue her. (Ecclesiastes 1:20-21)
James 1:5; Ephesians 5:15-18; Psalms 90:12; Deuteronomy 6:10-12
Conclusion
This first law of the harvest sets us on our journey to a great harvest. But the key is to begin to sow today for tomorrow knowing it will make a difference in the lives coming behind us.
"The Only Preparation for Tomorrow is the Right Use of Today"
Charlie Brown is seen at bat. "STRIKE THREE!" He has struck out again and slumps down on the players’ bench. He say, "Rats! I’ll never be a big league player. I just don’t have it! All my life I’ve dreamed of playing in the big leagues, but I know I’ll never make it." Lucy turns to console him. "Charlie Brown, you’re thinking too far ahead. What you need to do is set yourself more immediate goals." Charlie Brown looks up and asks, "Immediate goals?" Lucy responds, "Yes. Start with this next inning when you go out to pitch. See if you can walk out to the mound without falling down."
The first step toward a great harvest is the step you make today. Make it forward . . . godly . . . well aimed . . . and purposeful. The steps you take today become the well worn path of tomorrow.
(From a series by Bob Aubuchon modified for my audience)
