Sowing
Introduction
Last week we took up a seed offering for our guest speaker. When I told the guests who came to hear him that they did not have to give in the regular offerings, they looked at me as if I was crazy. Most people plan to give once when they come to Church and I wanted that to go to the minister that they came to hear, to sow a seed into his ministry. Sowing and Reaping. Today I want to talk about the sowing part and next week we will deal with the seeds. If the Lord wills, we will complete this series with reaping.
Have you ever tried to plant something – watch it grow into something else? Maybe you had to plant something in a cup at school – growing peas or something. I have never been big on gardening – although I love to eat what is being produced. I would classify myself as Oliver on the Green Acres show. Remember, no matter what he did, the things he planted just did not turn out right – that would be me. Now Nikki, as well as Aunt Mae, on the other hand have what some people would call a green thumb. She takes growing her flowers and veggies extremely seriously. Sometimes she cannot understand my lack of interest in her love. Gardening and being out in the yard is like high heaven for her, going to a Christian bookstore to stock up resource materials is that for me. But Nikki knows how to grow things. She knows the soil, what plants will do well in what type of lighting, etc. This is all Greek to me, so when it comes to growing things, I yield to her. I cannot tell you the number of times that I have mowed down her flowers thinking it was a weed.
Anyway, my point to all of this is this – when you plant something, you expect it to grow into what you planted. You do not plant tomatoes and expect cucumbers to grow. You do not plan roses and expect monkey grass to grow. What you plant is what should grow – if you do not kill it during the process. A seed can only produce what it was intended to produce, nothing more, nothing less. But lets look at the best case scenario, what is planted, when it grows, it is what you want.
A lot of times we look at sowing and reaping primarily as it pertains to giving offerings and tithes to the Church or doing some charity work. I want to broaden your thought patterns this morning and talk about this not just as it pertains to money, but how it affect most areas of our lives.
This morning I want to look at the whole process of sowing and reaping. We talk all the time about a person will reap what he sows; that they will get what is coming to them, everything that goes around comes around. All of these sayings mean the same thing – what you give out will come back to you – otherwise, you will reap what you sow. So I want to talk about sowing and reaping, because it is a foundational principle that we cannot change. This principle works regardless if you have faith, whether you believe in it or not, or whether you are saved or not. The scriptures make it clear that you will reap what you sow. As a means of an analogy, I want to take the process of planting a garden and show you how this process works in our lives – even if sometimes we are not aware of the fact that it is working. Sowing and Reaping.
There are several steps that you will go through when planting a garden:
• You must choose your site or you choose what you want to grow. You must know what it is you want to grow in order to know where you will plant it and vice versa. You must understand the soil that you will be dealing with.
• The next step is to know when it should be planted – the seed’s peak time for growth. If you plant the seed at the wrong time it will not grow – but if you plant it when it is its season, then a crop will grow.
• Next you must know how to plant, some seeds are planted deeper than others, you need to understand the depth requirements and the soil.
• Next you must prepare the soil for receiving the seed – till the soil, etc.
• Now you are ready to plant. After planting you must take good care of it and make sure that the bugs or animals do not eat what is growing.
• Finally comes the harvesting, or reaping.
This morning I want you to focus on the sowing only. We always say you will reap what you sow, what goes around comes around, that people will get what is coming to them. All of these are expressions of the Galatians 6:7. Please read this with me.
Gal. 6:7
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a mans sows, this he will also reap…….”
Gal. 6:7-9 speaks of this foundational principle that whatever you sow, you will reap. Both the good and the bad. Paul states that we should not grow weary in doing good things because we will reap what we have sown. In our world today, it is hard to sow – people question your motivations – why would you do something for them, what do you want in return. As we build this Church, I want us to be a church that sows. This verse makes it clear though that we will reap what we sow. Remember Jacob, when he cheated his brother out of his birthright by deceiving his father Isaac? Remember later when Laban deceived him and gave him Leah as a wife instead of Rachel? Jacob had reaped what he sowed. The same thing happened to Paul when he consented to the stoning of Stephen, later, Paul himself was stoned. You will reap what you sow – it is a spiritual law that you cannot get away from.
We all know that we will reap what we sow, but sometimes we may not understand that we are sowing seed everyday. Everyday we are reaping and sowing, it is a continual process. There are times when we are sowing good seeds into good soil, and there may be times when we are sowing bad seed into good soil or good seeds into bad soil. Regardless, there is a principle at work that says when we sow we will reap what we so. The take away is that we must be careful what we sow.
Remember the example of the garden? Once you know where you want to plant, you begin to prepare the soil for planting. In our spiritual walk, we do not always get to prepare the soil – sometimes we let the seeds fall where they may and it is necessary for this to be. What is amazing though, is that our seeds will produce for us a return regardless of the soil. Let me explain it this way. Lets look at Matthew 13:3-7
As you read the story, you see that some of the seed fell on soil that was not ready to receive them. Let me explain this to you so that this parable will make more sense. Back during this time, what the sower would do is carry a basket of seed in one arm and toss the seed with their free hand. After all of the seed had been toss to the ground, they would then come back and till the ground so that the seeds would be covered. Our farmers do it the opposite way – they till the ground to make it ready for receiving the seed. This is the way it is for us as we sow our seeds -–some of our seeds may fall on different types of soil and may not grow, we may not see the direct results from that particular seed, but because we were willing to sow, God will bring us a return – maybe from a seed that someone else sowed. Think about this, Nikki and our neighbor share their veggies back and forth – when one has a good crop and the other does not, they will share. Now they may not reap the benefits of what they sowed coming from their seed, but they are still receiving a return – it just coming from a different source. Once you sow your seeds, it is not your responsibility to make sure you get a return – you will receive a return just because you sowed. On Sunday mornings, another minister or I sow seeds into your lives through the message/sermon, but we do not contact you during the middle of the week to see if you are producing fruit with that seed. It is not our responsibility, it is your responsibility. Look at Matthew 13:18-23 – this is an important point that clarifies this.
Jesus is talking here about how the Word once sown, brings about the return. But look closely at what He is saying. He walks through the different seeds that had been sown earlier and correlating that with what happens when the word goes out. Sometimes it falls on ears that receive willingly, sometimes it falls on ears that do not want to hear at all. Now look at verse 23. The one who received the word, he is the one who is bearing the fruit – not the one who actually sowed it. Did you get that? The blessing for us comes as we spread the seed as God gives it, but the return on those seeds depends on each person independently who receives those seeds. Once you have sown your seeds, you release them to the soil that has received them – you turn it over to the soil.
Think about the garden, you know you put those seeds in the ground, but you know that if you continue to dig them up and look at them to make sure they are there, they will never grow. No, when you plant your seeds, you leave them there and let the soil do the rest. Now you may water or fertilize the soil, but you primarily leave it there for the soil to do its job. You cannot make the seed produce, the soil has to do that. Same thing with our spiritual seeds, we cannot make them produce, the soil that they are sown in accepts that responsibility. The one who receives the seed is responsible for producing something with it. We spread the seeds, God will bless us because we are sowing – we do not have to worry about the return from our own seeds. Let me give you another example, look at Matthew 25:14-30. This is the parable about the man with the talents.
Here is the story of the man with the talents. He gave them to his servants – you know the story. Some of his servants when out an multiplied what he had given him so that when he returned, they gave him back more than they had received. But he had one servant who went and hid the money and did not bring forth a return. He did nothing with the talents that he was given (a talent is a unit of money) so he had nothing to give when his master returned. Look at what the master said in verse 26: “….you knew that I reap where I did not sow and gather where I scattered no seed….” The one who sowed was the master when he gave the seed (talents) to his servants, then it became the servants’ job to grow the seed.
What am I saying? There are those that believe that you are responsible for where you sow your seeds, into what ministry, charity, etc. That you are responsible for the growth of that seed. But according to the Word, once you have sown it, if you did so with a pure heart and to the best of your ability, then you will receive your blessing and the increase falls on the one who received the seed. Now you must remember that you are responsible for the seed that is sown within you by someone else, but when you are doing the sowing, your job ends at that point unless otherwise directed by God. On Sunday mornings I cast seeds out to you. I cannot tell you how to make them grow, all I can do is plant them. When you receive them, then it is up to you what you do with them. Some of you may bring forth a hundred fold in your life, others may not, but it is something that I know that I cannot control. Same thing with our children - for the first 18 years of their lives, we are sowing seeds. When they get older, the seeds are still there, but they get to decide how those seeds will grow. Maybe God will use someone else to help them along, but the seeds that we planted are now within their control. There are people that refuse to give tithes in Church or support charities because they may not know everything about what the money is being used for. Now God does not expect you to be foolish with your money, but he does not want you to feel that you have to evaluate every single transaction before you give. Same thing when you choose to do something for someone. You do not choose to act based on whether you believe that person is worthy of your attention, but as you are led of God to do. You only have the seed until you release it – then that seed becomes the property of the one who receives it. We have the seed temporarily.
I want to share this Scripture with you as I am about to close. Look at John 4:34-38. Jesus was explaining a principle to the disciples that applies to reaping. The disciples were concerned that Jesus had not eaten, look at how Jesus responds: Jesus says that they were reaping where they had not sown.
In these verses Jesus shows us that there are times when we will reap what others have sown. We are benefiting from the work of others. There are blessings that we are receiving today because of the seeds that maybe our parents have sown. Think about the seeds sown during the civil war – all of the African Americans who risked immediate death if caught – yet they fought for freedom from slavery. Think about the civil rights movement – people like ML King, Megar Evers, Rosa Parks – regardless of their motivations, because of the seeds they sown, we are reaping the benefits. Our children are benefiting from seeds that we have sown over the years. They may not realize how blessed they are – yet they continue to reap. I know there are those who say that if you sow in bad soil, you will not get a good return, but I am here to tell you that your return is not based on where you sow, but on your attitude while sowing. Think of it like this, if you are sowing based on what you believe God has directed you to do and you have no reason to doubt that, God will bless it. Now if you are planting seed into something that you know God is not in or approves of, you will receive, but what you receive may not be what you are hoping for. Whenever you sow, you will receive a return on what you sow. It might be directly from your seeds, but the harvest will come.
Conclusion
I want to close with this Scripture: 1 Cor. 3:6-8. Paul is speaking to the Corinthian Church about a matter that came up when some of the members began to say they were of Paul while others were saying they were of Apollos. Remember that Paul was a missionary who started the ministry there, Apollos was the one who held meetings and built up the ministry. Paul basically said that whether you planted (sowed) or watered, you will receive your reward. Our responsibility is to sow our seeds and produce with the seeds that are sown within us. Do not worry about the seeds you sow, just continue sowing. Remember Galatians 6:7
Gal. 6:7: Do not be deceived, God is not mocked: for whatever a man sows, this he will reap.”
Do you understand that? Your job is to sow the seeds – spread them out, let them fall and be planted. You will not always know the type of soil, whether it is good or not, just keep planting. When your arm gets tired of throwing the seeds, just keep planting. When the world looks at you and wonders why are you doing some of the things you are doing, just keep planting. God will bring the increase, as you cast out the seeds. Remember that your increase may not be directly from the seeds you sowed, but directly because you sowed seeds.
