“Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”
When we lived in San Antonio I had a vegetable garden out back. I grew various types of vegetables, but the plants that always did the best were pepper plants. Now I didn’t have a lot of room for a garden, so a crammed everything together. I put in tomato plants first, about two feet from one another and in between the tomato plants I placed other vegetables: carrots, radishes and so on, I also planted lots of chili peppers and sweet bell peppers. It looked like one great heap of plants.
Now seeds are expensive, so what I did was take seeds from some of the peppers the year before instead of buying pepper seeds. The plants all grew well and soon it was time to harvest.
One afternoon I added some sweet bell peppers from our garden to a salad that was part of our dinner that night. But as we tasted our salad that night, holy smoke! The salad was super hot and spicy. Wow it was great. We only had lettuce, spinach and sweet bell peppers in the salad that night but it had a kick you cannot believe. You see, probably because I planted everything so close, the plants the year before apparently had cross pollinated and the sweet bell pepper seeds I had planted had taken on chili pepper spiciness. They were not sweet at all, they were hot and spicy bell peppers. Those bell peppers sure looked sweet, but boy were they spicy. So it turns out that I planted hot bell peppers and harvested hot bell peppers.
We reap what we sow. This is obvious, is it not? We plant tomato seeds, we get a tomato plant, we plant watermelon seeds we get watermelon; We plant love and we harvest love, we plant patience we get patience, we plant faith we get faith.
Last week, Lois showed us how we are to live our new spiritual life, we live life in the Spirit with Fruit of the Spirit. This week, Paul shows us some practical application of the Fruit of the Spirit.
We have seen in this study of the book of Galatians that we are not to live by the law, we are not to live with the goal of being good people – we are to live by faith with the goal of being faithful people. We saw that anyone can be good, Christian or unchristian, so being good cannot be our goal as Christians, no, our goal as Christians is not to be good, but to be faithful. Remember we saw that it is by faith we are saved in Christ, and in parallel, by faith we grow in Christ. We learned that we are not able to grow in Christ on our own, it is impossible, but we are to place our faith in Jesus Christ and He will provide the growth by giving us spiritual tools called, Fruit of the Spirit. Paul told us that since we are now Christians, we are to stop living the way that comes naturally to us and now start living the way that comes unnaturally to us, by life in the Spirit, this life is directed by the Holy Spirit within us as we see the fruition of the Holy Spirit through the Fruit of the Spirit.
Looking at our Scripture for today, Galatians chapter 6, we see Paul showing us what life looks like in a practical way as we live our life in the Spirit.
Starting with verse 7, we see the heart of the matter that Paul is speaking of, “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.”. This is fairly obvious stuff: What I sow in life, I will reap in life, but the spiritual principle that Paul is teaching us this morning goes beyond the obvious. First, we see that a little is sown, yet much is harvested and second the harvest is not only here on earth, but in the presence of God at the end of time as well.
Now this is not the Christian version of Hindu Karma. The whole concept of karma is essentially centered around spiritual energy. It is an attempt to build positive spiritual energy around the self by positive acts. This is the idea behind the “random acts of kindness” bumper stickers we see on cars around town. The idea is that the more positive energy one has built up the less likely tragedy will befall them or the community around them.
On August 16, 1987, a group of people tried to apply this concept with what they called the Harmonic Convergence. Thousands of people gathered at Mount Tamalpais just north of San Francisco and other designated religious hot spots around the world, such as Stonehenge, to usher in what was hoped to be a major energy shift. It was said that if enough people got together and thought positive thoughts, the global perspective would shift from one of human conflict to one of human cooperation; In other words there would be enough positive energy (karma) to usher in an era of universal peace.
So much for peace.
On the positive side, a whole bunch of tee shirts were sold.
Paul is not talking about some kind of spiritual energy, spiritual vibes etc. There is no such thing as a nameless spiritual energy – there is God, who is a personal being, and the Bible also tells us that there is Satan and his dominions. But there is no such thing as some mass of spiritual energy.
What Paul is writing here is also not what comes around goes around. You know, the thought that if I live like as a jerk, eventually people will treat me like the jerk I am. But this is not really about positive and negative acts, what this is, is an explanation of the Fruit of the Spirit. The Fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Last week, Lois correctly explained that these are called the Fruit of the Spirit and not, Fruits of the Spirit, as love really is the Fruit of the Spirit and the other eight are expressions of the fruit of love.
Now a couple of weeks ago we saw that we have the natural self and the spiritual self. The natural self is the person we have always been, the person we naturally were born to be. We all have a natural self. We saw that the natural person does things that come to him or her, naturally. But what comes to us naturally isn’t necessarily good, is it? Many of our natural inclinations are quite sinful. We saw for example, it is a natural thing to lie.
We also saw that when we become Christians we have the Holy Spirit come upon us and at the point we also have a spiritual self. Only Christians have a spiritual self. If you remember, the problem that comes into play in our lives is that we continue to do what comes to us naturally as opposed to what comes to us spiritually. We have to learn how to live spiritually, (what Paul calls life in the Spirit) and so God provides us with the Fruit of the Spirit to help us learn this life.
All that said, here is what Paul is getting at here: If I sow the natural life, Paul calls it the sinful nature here, if I sow the natural life, then life for me will not change and I will continue to live like everyone else. I will not be able to work through problems, I will not have answers, I will not understand how spiritual things work. However, if I sow the Spirit, then I will be able to live the spiritual life, or life in the Spirit as God has intended.
If I sow the Spirit, what do I reap? The Fruit of the Spirit.
If I sow the natural life, life as I have always lived it – I will not harvest the Fruit of the Spirit. I will continue to live a life without God’s guidance.
Remember how we sow the fruit of the Spirit? We daily place our faith in Jesus Christ. We talk to him throughout the day (that’s prayer), we learn His word (that’s bible study) and we place our faith in the Holy Spirit and NOT in our own abilities.
See, the Fruit of the Spirit are not enhanced natural abilities, they are supernatural Spirit given abilities so that we can do things that are quite frankly impossible for us to do as natural human beings. The Holy Spirit gives them, so then they are of supernatural origin. This is what Paul is speaking of here – sowing the Spirit in our lives, will reap the spirit in our lives.
Let us look at the process of reaping. When I plant one tomato seed, I harvest many tomatoes. With sowing and reaping, the concept always works the same, I sow a little, I reap much more than I have sown. It works with seeds, and it works with other areas of life as well.
I sow a little anger, I reap a larger response of anger around me. I sow a little immorality, I harvest larger consequences from that small bit of immorality. However, if I sow tiny little bit of faith in Jesus Christ, I harvest a much larger amount of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control……
Do you see that? A little sown, yields much more in time.
This brings us back to verse 1. Here Paul gives us practical application of the Fruit of the Spirit. We see there in verse one what we are to do when we find a brother or sister someone who is caught in sin. What he means here by caught in sin, is not a premeditated sin or a person with continued unrepentant sin, but a sin that has caught a person off guard. When he says, “you who are spiritual”, He means those who are following the life of the Spirit, as evidenced by the Fruit of the Spirit in their lives.
What we see in his description is the Fruit of the Spirit in action. We see patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control involved here in this example from Paul. Now you could argue that those virtues can be in anyone and they are not uniquely Christian – that is true, if we were talking about human virtues – these are not of human origin, they are of supernatural origin. Fruit of the Spirit, since it is of the Spirit and not of humanity, is of supernatural origin and not human origin.
So, what we see is this: A person you know falls into sin and you set about to restore him and the person responds not so favorably, he is a jerk and tells you to take a hike. Now how you would naturally respond is to perhaps, tell them off, become angry, become offended and walk away letting them remain in their sin. But, if you have the developing Fruit of the Spirit, you would exhibit more of the patience, kindness, gentleness and self control that you in all honesty, could not be able to exhibit on your own – thus being able to restore this person.
See how that works?
Actually it is quite easy to see this in action as God intended it. Have you ever been called on a sin you have committed by someone and they were sarcastic or nasty about it. Did they create the feeling that they were someone more spiritual than you by bringing this sin to your attention? Well, that’s spiritual correction done by human effort, and it always leaves a bad taste in your mouth. See, by correcting in a human way they are really focusing on themselves and not on the Holy Spirit. They are comparing themselves in their spiritual life to who you are your spiritual life. The problem being, they have no idea about your real relationship with God. Beware of those people who like to brag about their own spiritual success or spiritual growth, they are not living by the Spirit.
True use of the Fruit of the Spirit will always bring about spiritual growth and will NEVER focus on the person doing the correction, the focus will always be on the Holy Spirit. This is the test we see given in verse 4. It shows us how to see if a person is acting by the Spirit or by human effort. Another way of saying what Paul tells us in verse 4 would be, if I think of myself as better than the person I am correcting – then I am not doing the action by the Spirit. Action by the Holy Spirit will always point to God and not to the self.
In verse 2 and in verse 5 we have a seeming contradiction. In verse 2 we are told to carry each others burdens and in verse 5 we are told to carry our own load. So do we carry each other’s burdens, or do we carry our own? We do both.
In the Greek, which Paul wrote in, two different words are used here, so the apparent contradiction is only in the English text. The first word used for burdens means something that is heavy. We would apply this to something like the grieving of a loved one, the disappointment in losing a job, or helping someone in the time of financial need. This is something that we can help another bear – again we do this not by human effort, but by using the developing Fruit of the Spirit.
The second word used for burdens means to carry a commercial load, and it is also used to describe a pregnant woman carrying a child. It describes a situation where the burden cannot be shared like a pregnant woman must carry her child on her own. What this describes is what we will be personally accountable to God for on the day of judgment. My attitudes, my dealing with sin, my spiritual growth…very personal things only I can deal with, really he is describing the state of my spirit before God.
I want to point out that in verse 9 Paul tells us to not become weary about doing good. Now wait a second, haven’t I been saying that we are not to have a goal of being good people in life, we are to have the goal of being faithful people – doesn’t this contradict that principle? Well , no. Let me give you the full picture of how this all works.
Taken that we are not to be good people but faithful people, then are we to do good? Yes. Good people do good things. Faithful people do good things. However, the origin of the good and the effect of the good is very different in faithful people as opposed to good people.
The origin of good in good people is one of human effort and its results are temporal, they will not last. The origin of good in faithful people is the Holy Spirit and the results of good originating in the Holy Spirit are eternal.
Here is how we are to live this in a very practical sense: Instead of focusing on doing good things in my life, I focus on my relationship with Jesus Christ, I stay in contact with Him as much as possible and by that action the Fruit of the Spirit is developed in my life over time. (Remember the Fruit of the Spirit is of supernatural origin, and not my human abilities). Then when situations come up, I am able to handle them well, because the patience is not my own, the kindness is not my own, the faithfulness is not my own – it is of the Holy Spirit.
A short way of saying this is: I don’t start out doing good things, but by the direction and by the help of the Holy Spirit I end up doing good things. When I focus on my relationship with Jesus Christ, the outgrowth is good works.
How is this different than doing good at the start? Very simply, if I am living to be a good person, I am doing everything on my own – and ultimately it is all about me. I am in fact attempting to justify myself with my good works. However, if I first focus on Jesus Christ and my relationship with him, if this relationship grows ever stronger, then God will provide the Fruit of the Spirit, so that my actions are selfless, godly, Spirit driven and will be effective eternally. See, it is these types of good works, the works that are by Spirit effort that will follow us in the afterlife, NOT the works done by human effort.
That is a sobering thought.
Paul in this letter to the Galatians is showing us how to move away from living like we always have lived, by what comes naturally, and how to learn to live by the Spirit. Look we most certainly can become Christians and then just live like we always have, many, many have done this.
If you do not do this, if you become a Christian and then live as you always have in a natural state then, you will never rise above your natural self, you will have nothing but spiritual failure, you will spiritually, amount to nothing. You will just be like everyone else. I hate to be harsh, but, these are the facts, and this may be why you are frustrated in your life. This is why Paul tells us that God is not mocked. We cannot pretend, we cannot really fake it. We can make people here on earth believe that we are strong Christians, but God will always see through how we live, and we will fail to reap things of the Spirit because we fail to sow things of the Spirit.
HOWEVER, God has a way for us to live as spiritual people who don’t have to fake it.
We stop living a life with the goal of being good people.
We start living a life with the goal of being faithful people.
We stop attempting to correct ourselves and others by human effort.
We start paying very close attention to our relationship with Jesus Christ.
The result of closer attention to our relationship with Jesus Christ will yield Fruit of the Spirit. The Fruit of the Spirit that develops in our life will then empower us to live as Christ Jesus desires us to live.
Let us pray.
