Sermon Transcript — February 9, 2008
Hazel Benwell is a gardener. In fact, she's an avid gardener. One common problem, of course, that gardeners have, especially as they get older, which a large part of this group wouldn't understand because I see lots and lots of young faces out there, is that they sometimes lose track of what they planted. They forget what row contains what, or they get a little confused in how how the garden works, but every good gardener, regardless of age, likes to know everything there is to know about their garden. They want to keep up; they want to keep track; they want to make the best possible garden that they can make.
But Hazel found a way to keep track of her garden as her memory got a little less active. She started using white, plastic knives. Now if you spend much time in this building, you know all about white, plastic knives, though I think we've graduated to clear, plastic knives on several occasions, which generally are a little heavier, a little easier to use, but most of us know about white, plastic knives.
She found that she could take a magic marker or some kind of an indelible ink pen and write the name of what she was planting on the handle of the knife, and then take the knife and stick it into the ground at the end of the row and because it had the serrated edges and so forth, it went into the ground quite nicely. It held up well in the weather, and you know, and the wind didn't bother it particularly and so forth, so it became a nice permanent system. I thought since you couldn't see a white, plastic knife, I would show you what one looks like — it kind of looks like that — (he must have brought in a LARGE replica of a knife — audience laughter). Those of you in the back may not even be able to see that knife. I could have made them much bigger if I had know you were going to be all the way back there, but then I'd have had to have a helper to carry them up here. But the old fashioned way, of course, was to write the name on an expensive garden shop stake with a label section on it so you could look better than everybody else's garden.
Now before that, I remember when I was a kid, my mom often would take the package from the seeds and put it on the stake and stick it in the ground, but of course, when you get the rain and the wind, that doesn't always do you a great deal of good later. So you end up with the real old fashioned way, which I remember my mom often doing, and that is, wait and see what comes up.
But the question for you today is, what is growing in your garden? Don't look at me a little whacky now, I realize it's a little early for gardens to be planted in Ohio. I'm not really talking about your garden of vegetables or even your orchard. I am talking, of course, about our spiritual garden which is always being cultivated. Today we want to look at our garden and see what's growing there, what kind of fruit it will produce, perhaps what we can do to make it even better.
Now God describes Himself in many places in the scriptures. Several different times, He uses the descriptor, "the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them." I find that a really powerful statement because when you get down to pray and you begin to think about all that you are dependent upon day in and day out in food and water and air and the very ground on which we walk, the gravity and all the laws that God put in motion, to know that God is the Creator of all of it and therefore has it all under His control and is very capable of maintaining it, sustaining it, in fact, His word says, "By the word of His power." That's a very encouraging and thought-provoking concept that enables us to worship God, praise God, appreciate what God has provided for us.
But because God is Creator and Sustainer of it all, He, of course, created laws that make it work, that make everything that we need function in the way that it should function. Of course, that system has been somewhat corrupted as we will see in a few moments. But when God created man, He gave him dominion, dominion over what? Well, dominion over all of it. God gave mankind dominion. Now we think of dominion, which of course, means government or authority, control over all of it, and we tend to think of it primarily regarding animals because we know that we are better than the animals, greater than the animals, more intelligent than the animals. We can control the animals. We tame the animals; we train the animals, and animals can do wonderful things for us. We even use them as beasts of burden and pets and everything imaginable. Animals are basically dependent, to a large degree, in captivity at least, on us.
They are quite dependent upon God out in the wild, and they do very well except where man messes their lives up. But we don't always think or remember the fact that God gave us dominion over plants. I mean, how many times have you ever been rebelled against by a plant? Well, if you've gardened much, maybe a lot. If you've had certain kinds of hedges, or certain kinds of trees, perhaps you have seen a bit of what we might call plant rebellion. But that tends to happen more with human beings and animals doesn't it, because of the brain and the way that flesh is made. But God gave us dominion not only over the animals but over the plants.
Let's go back to the beginning and get the facts, back in Genesis 2. Now we could start much earlier in Genesis 1, but for lack of time, I'll skip over that and go to Genesis 2, and ask you to look at Genesis 2:15:
Genesis 2:15 — Then the (LORD) Eternal God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. As the King James says - . . .to dress it and keep it. To take care of it, to tend it, to keep it, to nurture it, to cultivate it, to care for it, to watch it grow. God gave man dominion over the garden. He gave him dominion over the plants. Even though we talked a little bit about rebellious plants in the sense of sometimes growing where they want to grow and weeds coming in where you don't want weeds to be. In reality, I don't think I've ever had a hedge tell me, "I don't want to be pruned today," or a flower tell me, "I don't want to be transplanted this week." You know, "Wait for another opportunity." Plants don't function that way, but plants, of course, do have to be managed. They have to be cared for. They have to be cultivated and nurtured and encouraged, fertilized and watered and protected and so forth. God gave us that responsibility. . . .tend it and keep it.
Now God bases a great deal of His revelation to us in that whole process of the plant world of planting and harvesting. The holy days themselves are wrapped around the harvest seasons. God gives us a great deal of information by analogy through planting and reaping.
Moving on to Genesis 3:17. After mankind had sinned in the garden, sinned, by the way, in relationship to a plant, an animal also, but the animal, of course, we know to have been Satan, the devil. But they sinned in relationship to a plant, didn't they? They used the plant in a way that God said, "Don't use it. Don't eat the fruit of this tree. It's not there for your food." But they took it anyway. Of course, it was symbolic of something much greater. We won't take time to go into today. That's a much bigger, deeper subject. But they sinned, and when God came and began to talk with them about the consequences of their sin, He said in:
Genesis 3:17 — Then to Adam He said, "Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it:'" Here's the consequence: "Cursed is the ground for your sake; or cursed, if you want to put it that way. Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life." " The ground is cursed." Something's going to change. Life is going to be different than I intended it to be when I put you here. You have made it so. You cut yourself off when you took the prerogative of doing it your way, and your way is going to lead to trouble and misery and pain and suffering and ultimately, to death." Which is what He had told them in the beginning, but they had believed Satan's lie, they would not surely die.
"Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life.
Verse 18 — "Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you, and you shall eat the herb of the field." Maybe again, some of you don't have much experience with thorns and thistles. If you spent much time in the wild, or even if you spent much time in the woods around here, probably; if you've spent much time gardening, or even trying to keep a lawn, you may well have certain experience with, especially thistles; they're often hard to get rid of, hard to cope with, or various kind of wild vines and roses and so forth that have thorns, things that are uncontrollable, not beautiful thorns like roses, per se, but the kinds of things that you get into and create a great deal of trouble for you, the nettles, the bull nettles, and the thistles and the things that stick to your clothes when you walk through a field. They can be very troublesome, and they're particularly troublesome if you're trying to make something to eat.
Verse 19 — "In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. . .in the sweat of your face. . ." God said, "You're going to have to work for what you get. It's not going to be abundant and profuse, fruit and vegetables and grain and all that you would desire. It's going to be difficult; it's going to be challenging for you to do what you have to do. You're going to have to dig it out of the thorns and thistles basically. Life is not going to be what it could have been." So man paid consequences for his sin by the cursing of the ground and the lack of productivity and control and dominion that man had been given.
Millennia later, God brought the nation of Israel out of the land of Egypt to be His own special chosen people. One of the things that God did, we read in the blessings and cursings chapters, is that He changed the rules, in a sense, about this cursed ground, but only for Israel, and only in accordance with their response to Him. Notice in Leviticus 26:4. Well, let's actually start a little earlier than that:
Leviticus 26:2 — You shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary: I am the (LORD) Eternal. That same Eternal that created the heavens and the earth and everything in them.
Verse 3 — If you walk in My statutes. . . There's the big "if." If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them,. . .Then what? What are the consequences of obeying God?
Verse 4 — Then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. That doesn't sound like it sounded in Genesis 3, does it, where He said, "The land is cursed. The ground is cursed. Thorns and thistles, and a tough time getting anything out of it." Now He says, "I'm going to give you rain at the right time. The land is going to bring forth produce; the trees are going to bring forth fruit.
Verse 5 - Your threshing, that is the harvesting of the grain, shall last until the time of vintage, till the wine is being prepared, and the vintage shall last till the time of sowing; It's going to be a continuing, on-going cycle. We talk about this all the time at the Feast of Tabernacles, don't we? But this was given to Israel as a physical blessing and a physical promise way back then, thousands of years ago. . . .You shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. Quite a contrast with the consequences of sin in Genesis 3.
God promised to bless. Now, God at some point in human history even taught man how to use the land, and how to farm, and the difference between the crops, and what was edible and what wasn't. God hasn't recorded all of that for us by specific description. He tells us about when He told them what was edible in the animal world in terms of Israel. He doesn't specifically tell us how He taught man. He taught man some of the things that man knows, certainly man was given the capacity to learn certain things by himself, but do you think God just threw him in the Garden and said, "Hope you do well."
Or do you think that man sort of learned how to cultivate everything that he learned from scratch, like the evolutionists say he discovered fire. Burned himself one day — "Oh, that's nice. Maybe I can cook a steak over that, you know." Doesn't happen that way. God is involved in teaching and helping mankind, and you read through the scriptures and sometimes you can read right over something that is rather important about our relationship with God. God had taught man how to cultivate and harvest plants. Look at Isaiah 28, a fascinating description here where God says that He has laws and methods and gives instruction even on the use of the land, the planting of plants, the harvesting of crops:
Isaiah 28:24 —Does the plowman keep plowing all day to sow?. . . Yeah, he plows until he gets done. And you see the farmers sometimes plowing late into the night. Now when I was a kid, lights on a tractor wouldn't have made any sense at all. You quit at dark, and you got up and started at daylight, but then, of course, man had to force that and squeeze more and so forth and I'm not condemning that practice. It's just that it puts everybody on a different kind of schedule, a different kind of approach to work half the night on the tractor with the lights. But today we have lights and the air conditioning and stereophonic sound and CD players, and probably televisions. I haven't seen one of those, but I'm sure they're in there nowadays.
But mankind works to plant and to produce his crops whether they're for sale or whether they're for his own personal eating. Does he keep turning his soil and breaking the clods? The answer, again, is yes. Why does he do that?
Verse 25 — When he has leveled its surface,. . . So man's always been harrowing and dragging and trying to make the ground a beautiful bed in which he can plant. Again, whether it's a garden, or whether it's a field. When he has leveled its surface, does he not sow the black cummin and scatter the cummin, . . . Notice how God describes the variety here. . . .He plant(s) the wheat in rows, the barley in the appointed place, and the spelt in its place? Doesn't man go about planting his crops with some reason and some order and some organization? And with knowledge of how it works, including the spelt? And about eighty percent of us, maybe ninety-nine percent of us in the room — how many of us know what spelt is? Aha! Surprise! Okay, seventy-five, eighty percent; I'll go back to my eighty percent. Eighty percent say, "What is spelt?"
Well, spelt happens to just be a kind of wheat that isn't easily separated from the chaff so it makes it a little more difficult to harvest, a little more difficult to work with, so it's separated here from the other things that are described. Going on:
Verse 26 — For He . . . that is God. For He instructs him in right judgment, his God teaches him. What? Did you read that like I did? He instructs him in right judgment. . . God is giving man the capacity to make good judgments and good decisions about farming. His God teaches him. So man didn't just come upon it sort of all by trial and error, though God, no doubt let him come upon some of it that way, partly probably when he was still under the cursed ground. But God had a system; God had laws in motions that governed the way plants grow and how they're harvested and what it takes to do the job. Going on, we get a little bit more specific.
Verse 27 — For the black cummin is not threshed with a threshing sledge,. . . Now He begins to separate between the ways the crops are harvested. He says, "You can't plant them all together out there and then just take a sledge out there," which is a big rolling kind of a thing and go over the top of it and tear it all down because they all require different treatment; they all require different capacities, different focus of attention.
It's not threshed — can't say "threshed" today, threshed with a threshing sledge - . . . nor is a cartwheel rolled over the cummin; . . . Again, not talking about a gymnastics cartwheel, but a wheel of a big cart, but instead, you might say - . . . but the black cummin is beaten out with a stick and the cummin with a rod. So whereas the spelt is going to take a lot of work to separate from the chaff, the cummin is so small and so sensitive, so fragile that it has to be basically shaken out of the plant with a stick. Compare that to a sledge, which might call more like a steam roller, and the cummin with a rod.
Verse 28 — Bread flour must be ground,. . . Okay, there's another step. Don't try to do it all at once. Bread flour must be ground; therefore he does not thresh it forever, or break it with his cartwheel, or crush it with his horsemen. You can't do it all at once. You've got to harvest it, thresh it, separate it, grind it, etc. So He says you have to have a process by which this crop comes to fruition. Here's the kicker in Verse 29.
Verse 29 — This also comes from the Eternal (LORD) of hosts, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance. God tells us how to do it.
Now God hasn't given us detailed instructions today. That's been passed on down to us by our forefathers. We learn something new, now and then, perhaps that our forefathers didn't know. But for the most part, it's been passed on generation to generation how you take care of crops. Some of you folks in the audience, probably more of the ladies, but some of you would have very well trained green thumbs as a result of what your mother, your grandmother, your great grandmother learned in working with her flowers. You can plant beautiful flower gardens, and you know what mixes with what and you know what cross-pollinates that you don't want to put together. You know what creates problems for pests and so forth. That's all been passed down and progressively learned down through the generations. But the ultimate authority and understanding and design and education comes from He who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in guidance.
The same God makes all of that work that makes the earth turn, that makes the earth roll around the sun, the moon roll around the earth. The same God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. That same God is keeping us alive and giving us every good thing so long as we are in harmony with Him. That's again why we should be thankful and fascinated by beautiful music and glorify and honor God when we hear it. But don't you find it somewhat interesting to see that God said all of this comes from Him? He made it happen and He sustains it.
A little further instruction just to show that God does this in Jeremiah 4:3. We have another comment from God, and again, some of this instruction and some of these comments are in the context of larger prophecies that sometimes have very specific prophetic meaning. I'm pulling them out today simply to indicate that God created the heavens and the earth, created the plant systems, and gives us dominion over them and gives us a blessing through them provided we do our part and that one of the curses that man had to endure was the cursing of the ground because he disobeyed.
Jeremiah 4:3 — For thus says the (LORD) Eternal to the men of Judah and Jerusalem: "Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns. Now, that seems almost too simple to be concerned about, doesn't it? Is this a commentary on how man would do without God's guidance?
"I got an idea, Hon. Let's go out and plant our garden in the thorn bush or in the thorns in the woods. Let's do that. See if that works." You know, God's almost laughing at us. Put it in good ground, plowed and level, and plant it in rows, make it work. Don't just go out there and try to plant it in the midst of the thorns and the thistles and the briars. "Break up your fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns."
That is so simplistic, it's almost like Will Rogers when he said, "Never slap a man that's chewing tobacco." (Laughter.) You know, you don't want the consequences of that action. Don't sow in the thorns; it isn't the place that's going to make it work.
Now clearly, all of this is not only agricultural, is it? It's a formula for right living. It's an analogy of the way God works with plants; the way God has created laws, and created actions and consequences of those actions that can be transferred to the way human beings function, the way human beings live and what the results will be of how we live, and how we follow the rules, and how we obey the Creator God who made those laws. That's what's involved here.
When we come to the New Testament, we think of that all the time, don't we? Jesus gave a lot of instruction based on spiritual lessons from farming analogies, familiar language to those in an agrarian society. It was common for Christ to do that, and we think, "Well, that's neat," but we sometimes forget that God was doing that all through history, all through the nation of Israel's history as well, and that Christ was simply making it a lot more pointed that this was a spiritual lesson.
We see that in Hosea, for example, Hosea 10.
Hosea 10:12 — Does this sound like it's purely agricultural? Sow for yourselves righteousness; reap in mercy; break up your fallow ground, for it is time to seek the (LORD) Eternal, till He comes and rains righteousness on you. So we have an intermixing of the physical crop processing and the fact that your life needs to change and adhere to the same Law-giver, the Eternal God.
So Jesus had used this analogy before because it's the same Jesus speaking through Hosea that is speaking the parables in the gospels. Jesus was very aware of the processes. He created them; He designed them; He intended them for certain lessons. Christ summed up the spiritual gardening process, His spiritual gardening process, if you will, in John 15. John 15 we know very well, I hope, and it is one of our primary references for spiritual growth and development, but let's read it.
John 15:1 — I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Yes. God is a Farmer. God takes care; God tends and keeps His garden.
Verse 2 — Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. Coming down to verse 5:
Verse 5 - I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. So without Christ, we can do nothing. We have to be connected to the Vine, who's connected to the Father from which our power and our capacity to function flows. Mr. de Campos covered that in a sermonette. God is working through that holy spirit through Jesus Christ through the vine to feed the branches which then produce fruit, flowering, of course, as they go, which I trust that we are.
Verse 6 — If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. So there is consequence of that as well, right? If we don't grow; if we don't change; if we don't produce fruit, what good are we?
Verse 7 — If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
Verse 8 — By this My Father (is) glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples. So the analogy has very clearly moved from just the laws of farming and agriculture, through the analogy to how we physically live in today's world with spiritual laws and spiritual guidance as opposed to simply going and living any way we choose because we are God's fruit. We are God's branches, the branches of the Vine who is Jesus Christ.
The apostles followed up on what Jesus taught. They made it clear that sowing and reaping are not just agricultural activities. They also described spiritual activities, the responsibilities that you and I have. John 4, if we can go back there.
John 4:36 — Just pull this one verse out of here, John 4:36, where He's talking about the fields being white to harvest. He says: And he who reaps receives wages, and gathers fruit for eternal life,. . . The fruit is not just physical food to eat. He says they are reaping, in this case He was sending the disciples out to gather the spiritual harvest — it's . . .fruit to eternal life. . . You and I gather fruit to eternal life in our own lives by the way we use what God has given us to plant, to sow, to cultivate, to water, and ultimately to harvest, to reap. But there is a process formula that works that comes from God and we are not permitted simply to do it our own way because our own way is what happened in the garden of Eden, and Satan, the devil, is ever ready to give us advice, and he is NOT a wonderful counselor or a guide. He is deceiving the whole world. John is talking about eternal life not food.
The apostle Paul then makes a distinction between physical goods and spiritual harvest in I Corinthians 9:11. Paul, of course, is trying to help the Corinthians understand their own responsibility, in this case it's their goods, and look what he says in Verse 11:
I Corinthians 9:11 — If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? Now when you plant something, you expect to reap from what you planted something more than what you planted. You don't plant — if a farmer does this, it doesn't take him very long to go out of business, to go broke. If he plants all of his fields with, you know, a thousand bushels of seed, and he harvests eight hundred bushels, what good is that? Or, let's say, he goes out and he plants a crop that is very high-priced at the time that he plants it, you know, maybe soy beans are going up, I think, seven/eight dollars a bushel, he plants a crop that's worth eight dollars a bushel, but by the time the harvest comes, you know, it's only worth four dollars a bushel. If the market dropped that fast, he'd probably be in trouble because he'd budgeted and bought equipment and everything else to get eight dollars a bushel. Well, what's my point? Paul is saying, "I gave you something very special, very valuable, spiritual knowledge, spiritual understanding, the knowledge of Christ and forgiveness and salvation. I sowed spiritual things among you. So is it any big deal if I reap some physical rewards in the form of sustenance, feeding me, sheltering me?"
Paul is saying, "What I gave you is far more valuable than what I'm asking of you or expecting of you, or what God expects of you. God expects of you certain physical things, but those physical things are of no value by comparison to the great spiritual truth, knowledge and understanding that you've been given. It's just a totally different world.
I used the analogy this morning seemed to resonate with the group, and so I'll use it again. It's like if your neighbor came over to you, and you've been real blessed, and you have a Rolls Royce. Maybe you can imagine that, just for a minute. You have a Rolls Royce. Your neighbor comes over to you and he says, "Say, I've got a very special occasion, I really want to look good, and you know I need this to walk in the crowd I'm going among. Could I borrow your Rolls Royce for the day and the evening?"
And you think about it for a moment. He's a good friend, and it makes sense, so you say, "Sure. You can have the Rolls Royce, but hey, you need to leave me your old beat up pickup because I got to get around, you know, while you're gone today."
Your neighbor looks at you and he says, "I never let anybody drive the pickup." I mean, that might be an extreme but that's the point Paul is making here.
"I gave you the Rolls Royce of spiritual knowledge and understanding and you don't want to give me back the beat up old pickup." That's the difference between spiritual things and physical things, and of course, that analogy doesn't reach to those extremes either.
But both Paul and John are using familiar farming examples to illustrate spiritual truths. Paul, then goes to where, since we're on the car analogy, the rubber meets the road. Paul goes to explaining, or annunciating, the spiritual law that is in motion that is described in physical laws of agriculture. Let's look at:
Galatians 6:7 — Do not be deceived, God is not mocked;. . . Nothing's going to change with God. He understands. . . . for whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. . . .whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. Do you have that in your head? . . .whatever a man sows, that will he also reap. You put a seed in the ground, it's going to grow what you planted. God produced a creation that reproduces after its own kind. Now, of course, we've corrupted that bit with all sorts of hybridizations and so forth, but with the exception of certain variety within species, things are going to reproduce after their own kind.
You can get flower seeds these days, or bulbs, and they'll tell you, "They might be pink; they might be blue." You know. "They might be yellow; they might be white, or some such combination." I don't know exactly which ones fit together but you don't always know what you're going to get. But you do know, if you plant an iris, you're going to get an iris. If you plant a, you know, a nasturtium, you're going to get a nasturtium. You know what that is. It's just a hard word, as far as I know. But God made it to produce after its own kind. So what you sow, you reap.
Now does that bring it down to the spiritual level of how I live my life today? What am I growing in my garden? What am I planting? What am I cultivating? What am I fertilizing; what am I nurturing and watering? What am I taking care of intending to produce fruit? And what's that fruit going to look like? How good is that fruit going to be? Everything brings forth after its own kind. Let's go on:
Verse 8 — For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption,. . . Now Paul's getting tremendously spiritual, isn't he? He's getting right down to the nitty gritty. If you sow to the flesh, the flesh will reap corruption, but he who sows to the spirit will of the Spirit reap everlasting life. He's talking, of course, here about the difference between salvation and lack of salvation, but the analogy carries through in terms of how we function and how we work.
Verse 9 — And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. . . .in due season. . . when it's time to reap when the harvest is ready, we will reap. God is faithful in such matters, and it's a wonderful hope that we have, that we will, in fact, be gathering eternal life, that we will, in fact, be reaping something that is everlasting because we have sown to the spirit, but the simple truth is we reap what we sow, whether in our gardens, our fields, or in life. We reap what we sow. Our spiritual growth and development is just as predictable as our physical gardens are predictable. Just as with physical crops, it's God that makes it all happen.
Folks like a title, so I titled this sermon officially, How Does Your Garden Grow? I thought that was a catchy, neat little title. And then I thought, yes, but then there are those who like a shorter title, and some who don't like the sermon, or some who might be in a bad attitude, so for you, the title is: Sow What? But you have to put a "w" on the "sow," well, I guess, if it's an attitude, I guess it's just "so." If it's a question of a shorter title, you can just use, "So What?" Because that's what we're talking about. What are we sowing? What are we gaining? What are we producing?
How about your garden, spiritually? Has it all produced good fruit? Maybe you're still waiting for the harvest. Do you know what you're expecting, or have you forgotten what you've planted? Is it possible you could be in for a few surprises on a few rows? Ooopps! Didn't think I planted that! Oh, spiritually, that could be dangerous. Now, it's one thing to say, "I thought I planted beans in this row, and it came up radishes. But I thought I planted eternal life in this row, and it came up corrupt." That's a little more serious, isn't it? A little more sobering.
In Paul's analogy, we're still planting, day by day, by day. We are waiting for the seed to bear fruit. God tells us what some of the options are. What are they? Let's look at them quickly. Psalm 126. I can't possibly go through all of them, but it's a fun study sometimes.
Psalm 126:5 — We reap what we sow. This one might seem at first to say otherwise, but it doesn't. Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. Our first thought about tears is, you know, that's bad; that's negative; that's sad. What am I crying about? But God, of course, is talking about repentance. He's talking about an attitude of giving ourselves into God's hands, of recognizing our own inability to do anything without Christ's love. Without Me, you can do nothing. And so we come to God with repentance and tears and what do we come away with? Joy. The joy of His salvation as David called it.
So, maybe we should take out our knives, and we should say, "Hmm. I am going to sow tears. What's that going to get me?" You know the answer, I hope, right? Those of you in the back there have good eyesight. It's going to get you joy. So you put "tears" on the knife handle and stick it in your garden, and what do you wait for? Joy. You wait for joy to grow because God is going to bless what you plant according to His plan, according to His purpose, and that is still in the realm of a variety of what you have planted. It is reaping what you have sown because it's an attitude, an attitude that says, "I want to serve God which produces joy."
Proverbs 11 — There are quite a number of these in the Proverbs. Let's look at a few.
Proverbs 11:18 — The wicked man does deceptive work, but he who sows righteousness will have a sure reward. So unlike the wicked, who don't know what they're going to get in their deceptive work, we know that if we sow righteousness, we're going to get a sure reward, so what do you suppose is on the back of this? I'm going to take this, write righteousness on it and stick it in my garden, and when the harvest comes, wow! There's a reward.
Now those in the front can tell there's another word on here, and that comes in another scripture — peace. Because righteousness produces a reward that produces peace. So you don't have to wonder what's going to come at the end of the harvest. It's going to be a product of what you've planted, and it's predictable, and it's sure. Back to Proverbs 6.
Proverbs 6:14 — This one isn't nearly as much fun. Perversity is in his heart, he devises evil continually, he sows discord. Would we knowingly plant discord? Would we knowingly sow something that's going to produce a huge negative harvest? What's He say? He says, "Perversity is in his heart, he devises evil. . .he sows discord." And what does he get? All the results are evil. So just as surely as you can put righteousness and tears on the knife handle and expect to get something really good at the end of the harvest. So you can put discord on the knife handle, stick that in your garden and let it grow day by day and you're going to end up with evil days, which God says He doesn't want to see come upon us, but that we will bring them upon ourselves as a people. We don't want to do that as God's people. We don't want to do that as God's garden.
Proverbs 16:28 - God gives us choices of what we plant, how we tend and keep our garden, and what the results will be. A perverse man sows strife, and a whisperer separates the best of friends. If you sow strife, you sow strife, you're going to write that on the handle, stick it in the garden. If you sow strife, what are you going to do? I almost stuck that in the electric, but not quite. What're you going to get? You're going to separate people. You're going to get division. If you sow strife, the fruit will be division. Strife, in a sense, is division, but it produces division further, and it deteriorates so that the peace and the joy that we would gain through righteousness and repentance will not grow. They will be choked out by strife and division.
Proverbs 22 , while we're here.
Proverbs 22:8 - You see how often God used these analogies of the physical plant world and the spiritual realities of life? He who sows iniquity will reap sorrow,. . .If we're going to sow iniquity, which is lawlessness, then we're going to reap sorrow. That's just the way the law works. You're not going to be able to live in iniquity and have joy. You're going to have sorrow. So I'm sure that by now, this very intelligent, sharp, alert group will know what's on the back of this knife. It says — Iniquity — on the front; what's it going to say on the back? Sorrow, of course, because you're going to reap what you sow, and those two are directly and intricately connected. Sin produces consequences, and those consequences will make you sorrowful, not necessarily repentant, but sorrowful because there are consequences for sin.
Let's take a look at a different agricultural picture that God gives us through the prophet, Isaiah:
Isaiah 55:10 I'd like to read more of this, but for lack of time, I'll start in Verse 10 which iswhere the clear analogy begins, but God is talking about the difference between His ways and our ways, His thoughts and our thoughts, and the fact that He is far beyond what we are. But coming to this analogy, He says in Isaiah 55:10 — For as the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth,. . . They're sent for a purpose; they're part of the plan. . .they water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater,. . .So it produces bread, but it also produces more seed with which you can make more wheat and more bread next year.
Verse 11 — So shall My word be. . . Now we're getting somewhere. . . .So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to me void,. . . Any more than the rain and the snow return without having watered the crops, . . .so My word will not return to me (void) empty when I send it to you for your spiritual growth and development so that I can have spiritual fruit and a spiritual harvest. . . but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.
Verse 12 — For you shall go out with joy,. . . Now He begins to show the fruit of God's word working in us and through us. You shall go out with joy, and be led out with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing before you, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. We've all seen that on the cartoon channel, right? All the trees clap their hands; God says that's real. The trees are rejoicing for what God has given them through His word, and what God has given us, eternal life.
Verse 13 — Instead of the thorn . . .There's that word again. . . .Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress tree,. . . Something useful and profitable, valuable. . . . and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree;. . .Completely different product; completely different crop; completely different fruit; completely different result, because God's word has come and is producing Godly fruit. But God's word has to be working in us and through us so that it does not return to Him empty. . . . and it shall be to the (LORD) Eternal for a name,. . . We are God's Garden; we are God's people; we are God's fruit. . . .shall be to the (LORD) Eternal for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. So a wonderful world of happiness and peace and joy growing good physical things, but even more importantly growing everlasting eternal life in God's people.
The apostle James, whom we left out earlier, well, we left out lots of apostles, but we mentioned John and Paul, let's go to the apostle James, James 3, most of us are quite familiar with this passage:
James 3:17 — But the wisdom that is from above. . . Now, this comes with God's word and God's spirit; this flows into us to produce fruit, and what are those fruits? The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. Not appearing to be one thing, then turning out to be something else. What's really bad in the garden is when you put the wrong stake at the end of the wrong row, and later you decide you don't really want those radishes you planted, so you dig those up, and the radishes come up in the other row, and you realize you just dug up the beans because you mislabeled it. Now hypocrisy's not that simple, but hypocrisy is a very important element in God's eyes that does not produce good fruit.
Verse 18 — Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace. . . There's that peace; righteousness in peace. . . .the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace. You have to plant it. You plant peace; you grow righteousness. You plant righteousness; you grow peace. You can't lose in that kind of planting.
Brethren, day by day, we are planting a spiritual garden. We are a garden, but God wants us to participate in that process, and so we're also planting a garden. We are participating in our own creation. We are participating in our own salvation. We are yielding our lives into God's hands and letting Him work in us and through us to produce fruit that is pleasing to Him, but we have a part in doing that, in planting, in watering, fertilizing, weeding, protecting, harvesting. We're planting. What are we growing? What is in your garden? Is it righteousness? Peace? Joy? Tears? Singing? Clapping hands? Is it happy? Is it positive? Is it productive and fruitful? Does it taste good to everybody else? Or is it evil? Is it discord? Is it sorrow? Strife? Division? Thorns? Briers, spiritually? Or is it myrtle trees and cypress trees, beautiful fruits and vegetables and flowers?
As you go through the next week, maybe you should ask yourself as I will myself, what have I planted this week? What have I nurtured this week? What am I really growing? If my harvest were to come from what I have planted in the recent past, or what I am planting today, what will I have? What will come out of my garden? Maybe we should take some of these knives out of the ground and just plow up those rows and plant them with a double measure of the other rows. Pull up sorrow and strife and division and plant peace and joy and singing, obedience to God. Maybe this week we could each carry around a box of plastic knives. Now I don't mean a real box of white plastic, or clear plastic knives because I know most of us don't want to look that silly at work. But figuratively, maybe we can carry around a box of plastic knives, and as we go about our lives and our days and our interactions with people, we could ask ourselves, what am I planting? What did I just plant? How did I just affect this other person?
Pull out a knife and write — evil. Ooopps, I don't want to do that. If that's the case turn around and fix it and write — tears, which turns into joy. Maybe we should carry with us a plastic knife box, a box of knives and label our actions, and label our deeds. It's really a way of just thinking about what we do, and how we think, and how we function, because thoughts have consequences. Words have consequences. Actions have consequences. We become what we do, what we think and what we say, but we want the harvest to be abundant in good things and completely devoid of evil, don't we?
We want what God wants. Thankfully, God is patient. God is waiting for a mature, ripe harvest of beautiful fruit, and it's going to come from the garden that He has planted and watered and fertilized, fed, cared for, protected, weeded, covered at night when the frost comes to keep it from dying, kept us from trials and tribulations so that we can be His special harvest. Let's go back to James 5.
James 5:7 - Let's conclude with this particular thought in our minds as James gives us counsel from his apostolic, spiritually minded perspective. Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth,. . . Here's an analogy again. Farmers plant, and they have to wait the long weeks until harvest, but they wait, and they wait patiently, and they rejoice at a good harvest. God is doing the same thing. He has planted us in the earth, and He is being patient, and so we're instructed, . . .therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and latter rain.
Verse 8 — You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. The coming of the Lord is at hand. The harvest time is coming. What are we planting? What are we tending? What will we reap? What will God, the Master Gardener, the Creator of the heavens, and the earth, the sea and everything that's in them, reap from His garden?