The Five Laws of Sowing and Reaping

Today on Summit life pastor Judy Greer continues our study in the book of Galatians. The quality of our fruits is determined by the depth of our roots.

He says if you drive your roots deeper into the gospel. Then you will bear the fruits of righteousness will say the same way he is now Zeta chapter 6 so to the spirit in your life and from the spirit you reap a harvest of righteousness like with pastor Judy Greer.

I'm your host Molly events the first things we learn as believers, is that through the blood of Jesus. All of our sins have been completely forgiven right past present and future sin. And yet we still suffer the consequences for our mistakes. Why is that doesn't seem fair sometimes doesn't well pastor Judy tackle that question today as he continues our series called freedom in the in between any analogy they were all familiar with, but we don't always acknowledge that you missed any of the previous messages in this series we're nearing the end so you want to catch up by visiting our website.

Judy Greer.com right now let's dive into the message today titled the five laws of selling your Bible and budget to get out and open it to Galatians chapter 6 Galatians chapter 6. So you say what back in Galatians about the series on Galatians was over, yes, but the series on Galatians is gone like Nicholas Cage's career.

Just when you think it is finally over there comes roaring back with something else. So Galatians 6B in verse seven.

Let's take a look.

Don't be deceived. Paul says God is not mocked, for whatever me a person's house that he will also reap.

Because the one who sows to his flesh will reap destruction from the flesh wanted search of the Spirit will reap eternal life. From the spirit. Let us therefore not grow tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time.

If we don't give up now to be totally honest with you, at first that sounded to me like Paul was contradicting all the other things you taught us in the book of Galatians honey throughout the book of Galatians, Paul has explained that the gospel is that God gives to us that God, not what we deserve. God gives to us what Christ deserved. In our place. He doesn't repay us according to what we have done gives us the gift of the gospel, but don't these verses almost sound like Paul is reintroducing the principle of karma. Here the end of the book, but that is the wrong way to read these verses, Paul simply reminded us of something we all know to be true.

A principal wall if you will, that God has built into the very fabric of the universe and that wall is what you so you are going to write. I love how I'm a Bible teacher in Atlanta named Andy Stanley explains as he says. Paul says we all really know intuitively life is connected where you are today is a result of decisions you made yesterday and where you will be tomorrow is connected to what you do today there is a relationship between your current responsibility and what you can expect in the days of the weeks and months to come we gotta realize what Paul doesn't say here. He doesn't say people reap what they sow. Unless they asked for forgiveness for forgiveness doesn't erase what you soon.

I run into this all the time as a pastor.

He said somebody comes up to me and they say Andy, I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best and I'm still struggling and I have to say to them why I'm glad you're doing your best. Now, but for five years you didn't do your best. That was solely now you're reaping from all those years of doing your best. Now that in a race all the sewing that you did then you see you can always get forgiveness of sins and still have to suffer some of the consequences of sin right will we know that if I eat an entire cheesecake every single night for six months I didn't get forgiveness from God for the sin of gluttony. And God will give me forgiveness, but that is not going to make the weight magically fall off of my body even when God forgives us, our action still have remaining consequences was affable essay what you so you're always in a REIT Tim Keller go so far as to say this is an absolute principle in Scripture.

AE says it's one that underlies the entire book of Proverbs and I get this this principle is explicitly stated more than 66 times in the Bible and usually read something like this I give you just a handful of whoever digs a pit will fall into it is my role started to roll back on them. What you sow you venerate you so that is going to come back on you wicked person earns an empty wage for the one who sows righteousness reach a lasting reward, by the way empty wage is not fulfilling meet. If you build your life around selfishness and injustice.

You might get a lot of is not really to make you happy and he says if you do it the righteous way then you end up having a lasting reward. Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity that would injustice and Hebrew is a synonym for selfishness.

If you live selfishly you can reap calamity, but a generous person a generous person. He says be blessed that one of the primary ways that Solomon in the book of Proverbs applies this principle is the money on the says things like that verse in this one here. Proverbs 3. Not again honor the Lord with your wealth on the Lord. Well, what does that mean meet with the firstfruits, the firstfruits, the first of the best of all that he gives to you.

Give it back to him, then your barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with nonalcoholic grape juice promises that he's going to bless you. It's like if you give to me a multiply to get back to you can't even even applies it to things like parenting on Proverbs 22 six. Raise up a child in the way that he should go when he is old he will not depart from it. That's not a promise that that every kid that's raise the right way is always gonna make all the right decisions. It's a principal and that principle is if you so righteousness into your child. In most cases, that's what you're going to harvest later was a here in Galatians 6, Paul picks up on that principal and he applies it to our life in the spirit and he says what you sow to the spirit you're a REIT from the spirit. This is not in contradiction of the gospel listen to me this is how you apply the gospel. It's similar to the metaphor used in chapter 5, where he told us that the quality of our fruits is determined by the depth of our roots. He says if you drive your roots deeper into the gospel. Then you will bear the fruits of righteousness will see in the same way he is now saved in chapter 6 so to the spirit in your life and from the spirit you're going reap a harvest of righteousness. That's true regarding, for example, what you put into your mind and heart, if you so the word of God in your mind and heart and the fruits of righteousness will grow in you, you keep the new believer filled collided with God's word and it's going to produce a harvest of righteousness in them. The principle is true regarding what we do with our habits. When you participate in the sin you are sowing into your life.

The appetite for sin that results in a greater craving for that sin I mean on appetite worse right in appetite doesn't go away when you feed it the does you satisfy for a little while, but ultimately when you feed an appetite he comes back stronger.

You know I'm talking about you go out to dinner and then you you you like just gorge yourself right meet the blooming onion all by yourself and many cheese fries and then you get your prime rib and then you two deserve to be have your wife's burden and at the end of that when you done that nobody done someone no I feel like I've never eaten again.

I never want to eat that way you never touch anything fried in my getting more red meat, no more cards on muddy sugar for the rest of the year column is that resolution last about four hours swimming right and then four hours later. Scrounge around the pantry looking for chips and cookies because you're hungry again. You feed an appetite. It just grows will cease and works like that also.

When somebody looks at pornography. For example, the appetite for pornography grows stronger and darker with each indulgence. Yes, you can get forgiveness, but the harvest of sin remains in your heart that's good to be true for lying. Every time you lie gets easier and easier to be dishonest.

It's true about pride every time you act on pride, it feels more natural. You become callous to it until you basically become a ridiculous narcissist who doesn't realize how ridiculous you look everybody else always heard that pride is a very strange disease because when you have it.

It makes everyone around you sick right because Kabir Toronto you like how they not know what they look like I'm there. Always talk about themselves in the third person and they're so narcissistic and they don't get MS because they have acted on pride so much that they just became numb to it. It's true for any sin, act on it and it becomes part of you gossip all the time and it becomes natural to share in prayer request, which I know you're not it should become such a part of you that you know is like to be cool anymore.

Righteousness also works that way.

The more you act on righteousness, the more it becomes a part of you know, listen to me. There are a lot of motivations, not the sin.

One of the most compelling motivations to me is that every time I sin that sin becomes a deeper part of me even if I get forgiveness. Yeah, I mean we give we have the attitude like will give us in here. I can always block that heavenly Lisa Cargill Jesus blood I don't swipe it. Now go back to zero and I know that's how it can in yes before thought the terrible would go to Gracewood. But even if even even with that that sin has now become a deeper part of you and it still germinating in you and that harvest is harvesting and it becomes increasingly difficult to weed out you can get forgiveness for your sin but you can't un-sin even after forgiveness. The fruits of sin remain so now here in Galatians 6, pausing to think about this principle.

Anything that specifically in regards to money and in our attitude toward money.

The reason I say that as we look at the verses around versus $70 number six is about money & it's about money. To this principle in 79, applies to a lot of places in the Christian life. But Paul is specifically thinking about it. In regards to her attitude toward money. This is not the only place by the way that he does this second Corinthians. You might remember when we start the multiply journey. This is the verse we used. Remember this. Paul says whoever sows money sparingly will also experience whoever sows generously also reap generously. So Paul is is going to to introduce to us the law of the harvest and how it applies in our lives what I want to do is using those verses in Galatians 6 and Lubin second Caribbean zone to give you call the five biblical laws of the harvest right number one. The harvest is limited. Paul says to the planting, the harvest is limited to the planting, you can only harvest what you plant right. If you have inserted God to multiply at a given put in the ground. I can grow it clears multiplications, clears pictures of multiplication occurs in John chapter 6 were Jesus finds himself standing before a crowd of 5000 hungry people actually scholars say is about 15,000 people because they only can admin in those days to Jesus in front of 15,000 people and their hungry nobody has anything to eat to Jesus on the little boy with five loaves and two fish or Hebrew happy mill or a Levitical lunch of, or whatever you want to call it, and I Jesus takes five loaves and two fish and he blesses that in the distribute said and it multiplies so that not only is there an offer all 15,000 people to eat to their full tethered to their satisfied there is 12 baskets full that are left over combat is the principle of multiplication the miracle demonstrates the pattern of multiplication you put it in the hands of Jesus, and as it is distributed it multiplies people I think have the wrong idea of this miracle by the way that they think the Jesus took the brand vision multiplied its another like amount of bread, an amount in the face of everybody just came up like a big Golden corral buffet that's not how it happened. It says in Galatians 6, or shoot me in John six, it says that as Jesus gave it to the disciples, it multiply, which means technically the miracle happened in their hands as they gave it away, not in his hands. So are you pointing out. Here's what some of you think God multiplies what I have.

I'll give some to his kingdom and guts, as you put in the wrong order. It's not going to multiply until you give it to my kingdom. When you put it into my hands in the kingdom. That's what it multiplies to stop waiting around on God. At first he's not going to act first, he's is when you put into my hands, and when you give it away. That is the point at which it multiplies. Here is a phrase in the come back to again and again today.

I heard recently from one of her church planters and about will really really good.

Generosity is an invitation for God to infuse blessing in your finances. Generosity is when you say to God, I need blessing in this part of my life. Maybe it's actually financial blessing.

Maybe it's God's need to change your heart in regards to money in your contentment.

This is a declaration. Generosity is a declaration that you need God's help in his blessing in this area. Loan number two we see that the harvest comes later. The Midlantic Boris is limited to the planting and harvest comes later than the planting. This is the hard part of harvesting is that it takes a lot of time to see your efforts pay off and quite honestly apply. Many people just don't do it because we are in instant gratification generation, not like that. For example, when I die I want to see the results immediately right now and I want to eat salad for dinner one time and be able to go to the mirror and looking to see a tremendous difference. How would one set of 30 push-ups and take my shirt off and look like a Greek God that is not how it works.

It takes time. It takes a lot of of so we can order for you to reap the harvest. What's even more true when you think about how it works out an agriculture you so in one season, and you'll see the return until the next season and on the next year what you are harvest. Today is the result of decisions that you made yesterday. John Muller, Pastor John Muller is our campus pastor arena or North Raleigh campus told me that one of the best practical jokes he played when he was a teenager was.

He said you during that time of the fall when everybody aerate some seeds. Their yard he said my buddies and I after dark would go out with a bunch of random seeds your watermelons and cornstalks and weed and some flowers and we would just distribute them in people's yards.

These are the hard part of the joke was there was no instant gratification on the next morning everything looked the same exhibited six months. It was awesome because people would have watermelon patch is a gourd growth in their yogurts. By the way North Raleigh.

This is the man to whom you committed the shepherding of your soul. So we encourage North Raleigh, but the law of later is why we so often give up on doing the right thing, it takes it takes time it takes weeks, months, sometimes even years for us to see the harvest, the law of later is why we can be people who are doing it the wrong way and still seem to be enjoying so much success and the like. Is there any use for me actually even doing the right thing with the sewing is not about the present. So it is all about the future. In fact, that's why Paul verse seven. Galatians 6 says don't be deceived, to see that were deceived is a really interesting word in Greek.

It will reply Mayo is where we get our work planet from you see the ancient Greeks used the stars for navigation, but they learned that there was a certain kind of star that was unreliable for navigation because it moved correlated have a concept the planet so they just called them wandering stars or stars that would lead you astray and sedately like you can base your directions on their stars because they'll take you the wrong direction and that's what we end up calling planets. Here Paul says you can look at moving circumstances and forget the God has indeed built a wall into the universe and that wall is what you so you will surely rate it just takes time but it is inevitable.

Do not forget the law of later. God will not be mocked is built into the universe and what you so today you were going to reap in days to come. Equally as important to the law of later is loan number three the law of greater the harvest is greater than the planting is greater than the planting in the harvest. What comes back to you is always greater than what you sowed. If you plant a wheat seed it will turn into a weed start that will produce hundreds of wheat seed planted corn. It will turn into an oak tree that can produce thousands of acorns that also coursework for things that we don't want to see multiply anybody who's ever tried.

For example, to grow a nice lawn of fescue grass knows that if you get even the smallest amount of Bermuda grass in there. It's going to take over where I previously lived my neighbor planted Bermuda grass.

My dad said well must you put down some kind of barrier that pretty much means that your lawn is going to be Bermuda grass in a few years God is moved by I did not do what I suspect 2000's hustle will have greater what start small multiplies in the something a lot bigger than you began with people. Sometimes I sound like this is unfair that I do not make some bad decisions, mineral eye falls apart and the like. I know I have been the wisest person in the world but I didn't deserve all of this to cannot say something you are exactly right. Zachary didn't deserve all that.

But what you're receiving is not punishment which are receiving is harvest below the harvest doesn't operate according to exact proportions.

What you read today comes back greater than what you so Jesus talked about the harvest is 30 fold 60 fold a hundredfold.

That's good to be true with the simple habits you so in your lives. It's true with corrupt thoughts that you fill your minds and hearts with its true with how you raise your kids. Hey, I remember your Billy Sunday the old professional baseball player turned evangelist used to say to dad for one lap you take her on the devil. Track your kids, take 30 I see Christian parents who sometimes are surprised when their kids go off to college.

For example, in their kids walk away from the faith, and I always say those a but we raise them in church. Yes, put church in your walk with God just was not important. You you you you you went puking sporadically. You can volunteer one in a small group, your family didn't admissions together. Your kids never heard you share Christ with somebody else. You can read the Bible together you and pray together. You kids want to Boldin the student ministry you frequently miss church for sports events or dancer trips to the beach or whatever.

Every weekend you raise the morale God which only did so would God is a second-tier priority and see what happen is that multiplied in your kids life so that when they went to college. They left the faith behind because they figure did not early and going to church Illumina.

God pleasing life in the face of such a hostile culture was just not worth the hassle.

If what you did that multiplied in the heart your house committed heart multiplied in them, but when I know sometimes a kid walked away from the faith and has nothing to do with that woman. To say that I get very concerned when I watched some of you because I see the what you're sowing into your kid is a little bit of Christianity and a whole lot of materialism and a whole lot of church as a convenience, and until you don't be surprised when it harvest all harvest of unrighteous is in your kit. Do not be deceived, God will not be not what you sow you will read anymore greater than what you said. By the way, was Scripture applies us the money. It teaches us of the harvest is greater than the planting at least two different ways. First, the magnitude of what you read is greater than what you so anything but adversely look at in Proverbs that if you give God the first and the best of your crops.

The middle multiply into your barging overflow and your vats being the with you. It's repeated and things like him malarkey three to March is the only Italian prophet bring the full ties dive is always in first fruit means the first of the bed. The first and the best the first 10% of what God gives you. You give back to him. There may be food in my house and thereby put me to the Tessa photo see if I will not open the windows of heaven. I love this phrase but which thereby put me to the desk to test me. I will draw a line in the sand. I multi-to cross that line. Watch what I do. If you do this, see if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need test me and watch what I do.

You cannot out give me adequacy it illustrated in John six when Jesus fed the 5000 member pointed out that when they got down there were 12 baskets full's left over.

You need as you so what was the point in that twist in the miracle everyone commentator that was like it was to show that Jesus had filled the bread of life to all the 12 tribes of Israel.

Mike, this is way too complex as nobody's doing. He's trying to do something to show the little boy. You can't tell me that little boy did not take the full basketball home mom and pop tart in my face and look what Jesus did with multiplied. The principle is you can't out give God that when you give to God.

He just multiplies it, and he pours it back on use of the magnitude of what is so is greater, but the kind of fruits are also great regrettably to six per minute our passage. Here Paul says the one who sows the Spirit will reap eternal life.

From the strip. Eternal life is a gift that is better than money is not talking about just going to heaven. Talk about eternal life in your heart. So the not spiritual fruits when you so generosity God uses that to produce spiritual fruit in your heart check and Caribbean skulls that the harvest of righteousness. God often uses generosity to give us gifts far greater the money is an issue little thought experiment grade 9 women genie in a bottle appears to you and says I will give you a wish to choose between two things. Troy someone is you have $10 million. Choice number two is to give you the ability to be really truly truly happy truly satisfied overflowing with joy with what you already have. You can only choose one of the two which one would you choose and also something spiritual like I think money and give it away to missions. I mean, like, just for you just for you, what would you choose me think about them only a phone which use the money because the reason we won the money is as we think the monies going make us happy and joyful and satisfying.

The only reason you want one so if there is a better way to get done in the money why when you choose that way to get to the end that you want to use to get my thinking to some extent one is what God says there's a better way to get to that place. This is such a career is urging us to flip the way that we think about our money and resources our message on Summit life today is titled the five laws of selling and reaping, and it's part of the series.

In the book of Galatians called freedom in the in between. From the very beginning, God intended for his church to move from person-to-person household household neighborhood to neighborhood nation to nation to move into areas of brokenness and despair and injustice bringing that healing hope in perfect peace. What this is.

Today is the same thing that lived their earliest disciples 2000 years ago the gospel message because of the gospel we reach the disciple and that's truly what Summit life all about and that's exactly what our new Bible study resources about this. Not even the you can work through this new resource any things like regular copy of the new study, when you get in touch with us today comes with our thinks we need to support this ministry join the team that makes Summit life possible. When you get today by calling eight 663-3524.

Give online genie clear.com and remember to ask for your copy of the study movement I mounting the events in my knee joints again tomorrow when we wrap up our study and policing began today during my knowing everything, to stand the clear ministry