Sowing And Reaping Series

Standing in the midst of the congregation reminds me of living in Missouri and driving the roads between various crops. Some cornfields were growing and healthy while others were unkempt and very unproductive. Each one of us here is a living Harvest based upon our decision of the past. Our health, our education, our faith and our intimacy with God are today what they are because our what we have sown into our lives in the past.

The world has always revolved around the truths that come from the process of what a man or woman sows that they will also reap from. This is something we can understand from the agricultural world but also from the spiritual world.

Just like many laws that we know such as the LAW OF GRAVITY there is the law of SOWING AND REAPING.

Paul encourages us to consider our choices as seeds we plant that will one day come back into our lives in the form of a harvest.

John Wesley's Rule for Christian Living Do all the good you can, By all the means you can, In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To all the people you can, As long as ever...You can!

7 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.

8 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.

PAUL HAD A SPIRITUAL CONCERN FOR TEACHERS:

6 The one who is taught the word is to share all good things with the one who teaches him.

I like that Paul begins his teaching on sowing and reaping by a challenge to how we provide for those who are serving Him in this life.

1) James warns in his 3rd chapter that those who teach others in God’s name will be held accountable for how they honor God as they do it.

2) Paul warns that those who are taught by those who are serving God will be held accountable for how they honor God as they do it.

Are we trying to sow as little seed as possible in the soil of their lives?

Are we making them struggle to survive as they try to grow among us?

1 Tim 5:17 The elders who rule well are to be considered worthy of double honor,(not double scrutiny) especially those who work hard at preaching and teaching.

1 Thes 5:12 But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction,

One of my friends in seminary pastored in a church in Jefferson City Missouri. After his experience there he made a commitment to never work as a pastor again unless it was in a bi-vocational setting. He said he never wanted to be at the mercy of those who felt they could control your whole life and family because the church gave them a paycheck to live on.

My own father was initially against our leaving Oklahoma to finish seminary in Missouri. He told me I would ‘starve’ going there. After talking with my mom recently I finally discovered that when he said that 22 years ago it was based upon his own observations of how pastors and their families were treated financially by the churches they served. Eventually God worked on his heart and he sent us out with full blessing.

Paul says that those who serve among you are not to be second class fish bowl citizens but counted as of double honor and appreciated as they serve not the church but actually the Lord as they work among in the Word of God.

This is also why I personally believe that greater punishment awaits those who use the church for the sake of personal financial or positional gain.

I think that they have multiplied at an alarming rate with the invention of the television.

Paul warned us about this in various passages: NT prophecies

(2 Tim 4:3-4) For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;

And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

2 Tim 3:4-9 treacherous, reckless, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding to a form of godliness, although they have denied its power; Avoid such men as these. For among them are those who enter into households(by TV) and captivate weak women weighed down with sins, led on by various impulses, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.