TITLE: Victory In Sowing and Reaping
TEXT: Galatians 6:7, 8
INTRO: Several years ago a woman by the name of Mrs. Jane Kolodziej was attempting to have her husband released from the psychiatric ward where he had been committed because she had testified that he had tried to kill her and their two son. She had told the judge that she believed her husband was mentally ill, so the court ordered him to be sent to the psychiatric ward.
Suddenly, Mrs. Kolodziej decided that she wanted him back again, and announced that she had lied to the court and staged a 4-day sit-down strike at the hospital. Finally she won his release by signing a waiver where she made the statement, “I want him out even if he kills me!”
Three months later, her husband beat her and the two children to death with a 2 foot length of pipe.
She wanted her husband with her at any price, even life itself, and that is exactly the price she had to pay.
When I read that story I couldn’t help but think of so many I have talked with that want their sin at any price – no matter what that price may be! They seem to forget that there is an undeniable principle that we must face: We Reap What We Sow!
God has many laws which cannot be broken: *Law of gravity – step off a 50 foot building into space, you will fall! You can DEFY the law of gravity, but you cannot BREAK it!
*Law of centrifugal force – if you drive your car around a sharp corner at the speed of 100 miles per hour, your car will be unable to maintain its balance and will roll over a number of time. You can DEFY the law of centrifugal force, but you cannot BREAK it.
*There is also a Law of sowing and reaping. If a farmer sows oats, the Law of like-produces-like guarantees that the crop will be oats – not barley, or wheat! Whatever a farmer sows, he reaps!
ILLUS: I heard a story once about a boy who tried to defy this law. On the back of their property was an old fruit tree. It had lots of leaves, but it had produced no fruit in years. High up in its branches, hidden from view by the leaves, there was a perfect spot for a little boy to sit and dream away the hours.
There he was a space ship commander traveling to galaxies unknown. He was a Tarzan, living in a jungle world. And he was a philosopher, solving the riddles of the ages. There, too, he would go when he felt mistreated, or misunderstood, or when he felt all alone. Little boys feel that way sometimes. That tree was his hideaway, special to him and to his best friend, another little boy down the road.
So you can imagine how he felt when he heard his father telling his mother, "I think I’ll cut down that old fruit tree. It hasn’t borne any fruit in years."
What could the little boy do? If he begged his father not to do it, then he would have to say why, and his secret hideaway would be a secret no more. Then he hit upon a wonderful plan. Since there were a number of apple trees in a field nearby, he and his best friend got a whole basket full. That evening, while his parents were busy inside, he and his friend climbed the tree and tied the stems of the apples to almost every limb of the old fruit tree.
Well, the next morning his father went out and looked at the old tree, and was amazed to see that it was laden with big, fat apples. And the little boy waited to see how his father would react. His father came back inside and said to the mother, "You’re not going to believe this, but a miracle took place last night. That old fruit tree is full of apples. There are fat, juicy apples on almost every branch."
His wife said, "That’s remarkable." "Yes," the father said, "and it is even a double miracle because that’s not an apple tree. It’s a pear tree."
Well, just as God has natural laws that cannot be broken, He also has spiritual laws that can be defied but not broken. One of those is this spiritual law of sowing and reaping. Remember: it cannot be broken! The principle stated here is immutable, invariable, unalterable, and cannot be revoked. Let’s take a close look:
I. GOD SEES WHAT YOU SOW
A. Satan tries to deceive folks into believing they can mock God!
- Think they can sin and get by with it….that they can break holy laws and not get caught…..that they can sin and not pay the price for their foolishness!
- So many people think they can sin and “no one will ever know”.
- And many think they can live any way they want on earth, and then step into the glories of Heaven when they die.
- It cannot be done; it is impossible to mock God for single moment!
B. God tells us very plainly in Number 32:23 “….be sure your sin will find you out.”
-Isa. 3:11 says, “Woe unto the wicked! It shall be ill with him: for the reward of his hands shall be given him.”
- No matter how fast you may run or how far you may flee from your sin, somewhere, sometime, somehow, you will be faced with that sin again if you do not repent! God cannot be mocked!
1. You cannot mock Him with a false profession. God know who loves Him and who is just pretending to be saved.
2. You cannot mock Him with masses or confessionals or communions and offerings or good works.
3. God looks on the heart and knows what you have sown
C. Satan has his lies:
1. “You must give up all joy to become a Christian”.
- Actually real joy doesn’t start until you are a Christian!
ILLUS: Witnessing to a man one day who said there was too much to give up to become a Christian. I asked him if he thought that the Lord loved him. He said “yes”.
I then asked him how much God loved him. He said, “Well, I guess enough to send His Son to die for me.”
Then I asked, “If He loves you that much, do you think He would ask you to give up anything that was good for you?”
He quickly responded, “Oh, no.”
I then asked, “Do you think you want to hold on to anything that it not good for you and will do you harm?”
He hesitated, but said, “No, I guess not.”
I then replied, “Then don’t you think you should accept God’s offer to save you right now?
He did…..because it just made good sense!
2. Another deception of Satan is that “sin satisfies’. He loves to try to convince us that there is more joy in the things of this world than in the things of God. But it’s not so!
*There are many here today who can tell you from first-hand experience that the world just doesn’t offer near the joy that God gives!
ILLUS: Several years ago, in the Sword of the Lord, was a story of a beautiful 22 years old girl who died one winter at a hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio. She had come from a good home, had been well educated, talented and accomplished. However, she wandered off into the life many think they want – sex, drugs, alcohol, etc. She thought that was going to bring her joy and happiness. Now she was dying in that hospital….disgraced and brokenhearted. Her body wracked in pain from disease and organs breaking down as the result of her sin. She had clipped out a poem written years ago entitled “The Beautiful Snow”. Let me share just the last two verses of this poem:
Once I was fair as the beautiful snow,
With an eye like a crystal, a heart like its glow;
Once I was loved for my innocent grace--
Flattered and sought for the charms of my face!
Father,
Mother,
Sisters--all,
God and myself I have lost by my fall:
The veriest wretch that goes shivering by,
Will make a wide sweep lest I wander too nigh,
For all that is on or above me I know,
There is nothing so pure as the beautiful snow.
How strange it should be that this beautiful snow
Should fall on a sinner with nowhere to go!
How strange it should be when the night comes again
If the snow and the ice struck my desperate brain!
Fainting,
Freezing,
Dying alone,
Too wicked for prayer, too weak for a moan
To be heard in the streets of the crazy town,
Gone mad in the joy of snow coming down:
To be and to die in my terrible woe,
With a bed and a shroud of the beautiful snow.
*Don’t let the devil deceive you! God cannot be mocked! He knows what you are sowing!
II. YOU REAP WHAT YOU SOW
A. The rule: you are going to reap exactly what you sow! Like begets like!
- If we “sow to the flesh” (things that appeal only to our fleshly nature), we will reap corruption (it will eventually rot or spoil on us.)
- If we “sow to the Spirit” (things that build up our spiritual lives) we will reap eternally.
ILLUS: Some time ago, Ann Landers published a letter from a prison inmate. It was a pathetic letter that really tugged at your emotions, written by a man whose mother had just died, and he couldn’t attend her funeral because he was in prison.
He wrote, not to complain about the legal system, because he said that he really did deserve what he was getting. But he wrote to tell the story of his life, how his mother’s one wish was that he would be released from prison before she died. And how that one wish was never realized.
He said, "The reason I am in prison is because I thought I could take shortcuts, that somehow I could ignore the rules and regulations, and get away with it completely." But he didn’t, and you really never do.
* Sin will take you farther than you want to go, cost you more than you want to pay, and keep you longer than you want to stay!
B. You cannot ignore this law!
Job 4:8 “….they that plow iniquity, and sow wickedness, reap the same.”
- If you are going to continue to sow sin in your life, it’s going to come back and bite you!
ILLUS: People are constantly trying to repeal the Law of Sowing and Reaping. They want the good rewards without paying the price.
For instance: “jogging in a jug” > 4 parts grape juice, 4 parts apple juice, 1 part apple cider vinegar is supposed to be a “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 jelly 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.
*Here’s the simple fact: We don’t have a choice. We are going to reap what we have sown!
III. YOU WILL REAP MORE THAN YOU SOW
ILLUS: A farmer plants about 15 – 20 bushels of seed corn. Is he planning on harvesting about 15 – 20 bushels of corn? No way! He expects to reap much more than he sowed! We not only reap WHAT we sow….we also reap MORE than we sow! No matter what we’re sowing!
A. You sow a sin…..but reap the harvest of much sin and heartache.
- You sow the sin of unbelief, not trusting Christ as your Savior, and you reap eternal Hell!
- You may think you’ve gotten away with it, but remember that reaping doesn’t come immediately after sowing. Sometimes it takes a while for it to come back and bite you! There is usually a delay between cause and effect!.
B. Whether for good or bad, you will reap more than you’ve sown!
ILLUS: A girl had a nice little piggy bank. Her father wanted to teach her about saving, so he talked to her about putting her money into a savings account at their bank. He very carefully explained to her that when she put money into her account, the bank would pay her interest on her money and that her money would grow that way.
The big day came. They went to the bank. She gave her piggy bank to the woman opening her account. Then she just stood there and stared at the woman. "Is there something else I can do for you?" the woman asked.
The little girl answered, "No, I’m just waiting on my interest!"
The girl didn’t understand that there was a delay between sowing her money in that account and reaping the harvest of her interest. That’s the way it is in life. Since that is the case, you need to understand a couple of very important facts about today:
1. The things happening in your life today are the results of what you have sown in the past. You are reaping the harvest of what you sowed a week ago, a month ago, a year ago.
2. What will happen in the future will be determined by what you sow into your life today. If you want to change your future, then you need to change what you are sowing today.
*Hosea 8:7 says “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind….” If you sow the wind in sin, you must expect to reap a whirlwind in judgment!
- When you sow sin, there will be no harvest failure!
- When you sow with God, there will be wonderful harvest in heaven, but also His fruit here on earth!
CONCLUSION: Folks, God cannot be mocked! You cannot ignore His offer of salvation and expect that you will go to heaven one day. Hell is real and it is waiting for you! Your only hope is to confess that you are a sinner and that you need Jesus to forgive you and save you.
I’ve watched too many people down through the years try to ignore this law of sowing and reaping. But you can’t do it. It’s real.
- I’ve seen many lives ruined by people who thought they didn’t need God, or didn’t have to pay attention to what God says. I’ve visited them in jail, in the hospitals, in my office in counseling, at the Hospice house, in the courtrooms. They reaped and many are still reaping what they sowed.
- You can’t live any way you want and expect God to just ignore it. He made you. He loves you. He died for you!
*Let me repeat myself: what will happen in the future will be determined by what you sow into your life today! If you want to change the future, then you need to start sowing with God today!
