SOWN ANY GOOD SEED LATELY
HOSEA 10:12
Introduction: Every day seeds in our lives, church and community are being sown. Some of these seeds are bad; some are good. Through the prophet Hosea, God said that it is time for us to start sowing good seeds that will be honoring to Him. There are four universal principles to sowing: 1. What you sow you reap, 2. Never sow mixed seeds, 3 You can’t reap if you don’t sow, and 4. Reaping is proportionate to what you sow.
I. What you sow you reap.
A. Galatians 6:7-8 “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap. For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.”
B. Madame Chiang Kai-shek once said, "If the past has taught us anything it is that every cause brings its effect, every action has a consequence. We Chinese have a saying: "If a man plants melons he will reap melons; if he sows beans, he will reap beans." And this is true of everyone’s life; good begets good, and evil leads to evil. True enough, the sun shines on the saint and the sinner alike, and too often it seems that the wicked prosper. But we can say with certainty that, with the individual as with the nation, the flourishing of the wicked is an illusion, for, unceasingly, life keeps books on us all. In the end, we are all the sum total of our actions. Character cannot be counterfeited, nor can it put on and cast off as if it were a garment to meet the whim of the moment. Like the markings on wood, which are ingrained in the very heart of the tree, character requires time and nurturing for growth and development. Thus also, day by day, we write our own destiny; for inexorably...we become what we do." – Source: http://www.ccel.org/contrib/exec_outlines/gal/ga6_7.htm
C. Be careful what you sow because God’s law of sowing and reaping is immutable (unchangeable) and inviolable.
D. Hosea 8:7 “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
E. Several years after inventing radar, Sir Robert Watson Watt was arrested in Canada for speeding. He’d been caught in a radar trap. He wrote this poem:
Pity Sir Robert Watson Watt,
Strange target of his radar plot,
And this, with others I could mention,
A victim of his own invention. - Erik Peterson, © 2005-2008 bible.org
F. Good Seed vs. Bad Seed
1. Bad Seed –
a. The Seeds of Sin – Job 4:8 “As I have seen, those who plow iniquity and sow trouble reap the same.
b. The Seeds of Discord – Proverbs 6:19 “...one who sows discord among brothers.”
c. The Seeds of Doubt – Matthew 23:1, “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in.”
2. Good Seed –
a. The Seed of Faith – Luke 17:6 “And the Lord said, ‘If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, Be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you’.”
b. The Seed of Righteousness – Hosea 10:12 “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.”
c. The Seed of Benevolence – Luke 6:38 “Give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over will be put into your bosom. For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you.”
d. The Seed of the Gospel – 1 Peter 1:22-23 “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God”
II. Never sow mixed seed.
A. Deuteronomy 22:9 “You shall not sow your vineyard with two kinds of seed, lest the whole yield be forfeited, the crop that you have sown and the yield of the vineyard.”
B. Ezekiel 44:23 They shall teach my people the difference between the holy and the common (profane), and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.
C. A farmer went each week to the Farmers’ Market to sell, among other things, the cottage cheese and apple butter made on his farm. He carried these in two large tubs, from which he ladled the cottage cheese or apple butter into smaller containers the customer brought. One day he got to market and discovered he’s forgotten one ladle. He felt he had no choice but to use the one he had for both products. Before long, he couldn’t tell which was which. That’s the way it is when we try to sow the good seed and sow wicked. The good becomes tainted by the bad; before long you aren’t able tell the difference between the believer and the unbeliever.
D. 1 Corinthians 9: 24-27, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
III. You can’t reap if you don’t sow.
A. Ecclesiastes 11:4- 6, “He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap. As you do not know the way, the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything. In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.”
B. There are those, who watch the skies, to see whether or not they can prepare the field and sow the seed. However, the plowing must be done when the early rains have come, even in the face of a great storm. The reason for this is that there will come a time when it’s too late to reap. There’s a great deal of procrastination when it comes to Christians and their sowing.
* They will serve God if...
* They will give their money if...
* They will invest their time if...
* They will answer God’s call if...
- Curtis Hudson used to say, "Well then, you ought to ’if’!" Solomon teaches that IF you wait too long, you will miss the harvest. In the same light, IF you wait too long to sow in generosity, you will miss the harvest of God’s blessing, not to mention the fact that those, whom you could help, would miss the blessing of your providing for their needs. - Observance of the wind and clouds will always cause a person to delay when it comes to sowing seed. – Dan Parton
C. Hosea 10:12 “Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap steadfast love; break up your fallow ground, for it is the time to seek the Lord, that he may come and rain righteousness upon you.
D. If you don’t sow anything, you will not reap anything. No matter how anointed you are, if you go to very good soil, clear it, fast for 30 days and 30 nights and pray and declare that it’s God’s will that tomatoes grow there, but you don’t plant tomatoes, the only thing that you will reap are weeds.
IV. You will reap proportionate to what you sow.
A. The size of the seed does not determine the size of the harvest; it’s the degree of the sowing.
B. 2 Corinthians 9:6-7 (NASB) Now this I say, he who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully. Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver.”
C. God is just: He rewards the righteous and wicked with the fruit of their doings
D. We get in return exactly what we give. Incredible echoes mirror our actions to an emphatic degree, sometimes in greater measure than we give. Charles R. Swindoll (1934- ) -Edythe Draper, Draper’s Book of Quotations for the Christian World (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992). Entries 1736-1740.
E. He rewards every transgression with proportionate judgment and every sown seed of righteousness with proportionate blessing.
F. Hosea 8:7 “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
G. Luke 6:38 “give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
H. In Canada, a believer operated a large grain farm. His spread included some twenty-five hundred acres. When asked how he planted the seed. He reached in a bin and pulled out an ear of corn. Then he proceeded to pop out the kernels one by one as he walked along, demonstrating the planting process. Do you believe that? No sir! That’s not what he said nor is it what he did. He pointed to a distributor that was some thirty feet wide. "We take that double tandem truck, fill it with certified seed, back it up to the distributor, open the slots, and pour in the seed." He went on to say, "If you’re ever going to be cheap, don’t be cheap with the seed." One bushel of seed invested yields thirty bushels of grain harvested in a good year. Thirt-to-one is not a bad return, if you are ready to believe and willing to invest. God says, "Believe Me, trust Me, try My plan, prove My ways, and see the kind of harvest I will give." So Paul guarantees this principle of truth in the Scripture with the promise, "And God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound to every good work" (2 Corinthians 9:8). All grace, all ways, all sufficiency, and all things! There are four promises in one breath. Knowing it is one thing, believing it is quite another. - Jack Exum – James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988), p. 463.
