Going to look again at Galatians 6, some of the foundations of this victory, this triumph that God has predestined and will infallibly come in the earth. Galatians chapter 6. And verses 6 through 10. Let him who is taught the word share in all good things with him who teaches. Do not be deceived. God is not mocked. For whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. For he who sows to his flesh will of the flesh reap corruption, but he who sows to the spirit will of the spirit reap everlasting life. Let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart. Therefore, as we have opportunity, Let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. Amen. Father God, we come to your word, expectant. We come to your word desiring that we may grow. You have said that you sanctify your people through your truth. Your word is truth. And so we come to grow in you, to worship you. And we pray that you would receive our responses through the merits of Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Ever since I was a little kid, I loved squash. Now, for some of you kids, that may make you think I come from a different planet. I know there's a lot of people that don't like squash, but I just love it. My favorite, I think, is yellow. What's the yellow stuff called? Yeah, whatever. That yellow stuff, that's great. I'll eat any kind of squash, but that's my favorite. My children, unfortunately, don't share my enthusiasm for this. Oh, Joel says he likes it. But I like it so much that what I'm going to do today is I'm going to plant a little squash seed here so that we can have some squash for dinner today. And those of you who were planning to come for dinner, in case you're thinking of canceling, Let me assure you that the only squash we're going to have for dinner today, unless one of you guests brings the squash, is the squash we're going to grow from this plant here. And we're going to take real good care of it. We're going to water it here. Any of you kids think we're going to have squash for lunch today? What do you think, Elizabeth? Think we're going to have squash? There's something wrong with this picture, isn't there? exaggerate about how long I preach, they might think that there is a chance we'll get some squash today, but there is something wrong with this picture and the law that we're going to look at today explains a little bit about that. We just are not going to eat this at lunch today and I want to appeal to this very basic illustration that even Elizabeth, all of our kids understand because we tend to violate this law over and over again in economics, in what we invest into our marriage, and in many different areas of our dominion. We fail to use the resource of time in a biblical manner. We fail to take into account seasons and patients, and consequently, at short circuits, the dominion that we've anticipated and that we've tried to work for. Now, this law that we're going to be looking at stands at the heart, actually all of these laws stand at the heart of the Reformation. And I want to introduce you today to some of the Reformation concepts of deferred gratification. That means you're putting off answering the desires, you know, feeding the wants of life. Deferred gratification, discounted time, long-term vision, future orientation, linear progress, investing for future generations. We're going to look at some of the logical extrapolations that the Reformation brought from this principle, this law of life. And here's the law. We reap, in a different season than we sow." Pretty basic, right? We reap in a different season than we sow. If you take a look at verse 9, we've gotten up to verse 9 of Galatians 6. It says, "...let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart." Now that first phrase, let us not grow weary while doing good, implies that there's a process of time over which you can grow weary, right? There's a waiting. And the phrase that says, if we do not lose heart, also implies there's a process of time where maybe something is not going on. The whole verse deals with this law. But I want to focus especially on that phrase in verse 9, where it says, in due season, we shall reap. In due season, we shall reap. Now, before I draw some implications and applications of this law into our lives, I want to point out that this law cannot be taken in abstraction from the rest of the six laws of harvest. They all come together as a package deal. And law one, just to remind you, says that we reap only when there has been sowing. We can't expect God to bless our evangelism if we're not evangelizing, if we're not sowing into the lives of others. We can't expect God to flourish what's happening in our marriage if we are not investing things into our marriage. We cannot expect our retirement account to grow if we've not put any money into the retirement account. A very basic principle. And so we saw that if this principle is true, we have to understand what godly sowing is about. And we looked at ten principles of godly sowing. Law number two says we reap the same kind that we sow. Now everybody knows that. And yet we violate that law all the time. For example, when people are out dating, and they engage in, it doesn't even have to be heavy petting, they engage in very light foreplay, such as kissing and hugging and holding hands, and then they think, that they're not going to fornicate, they're saying they don't believe this law. They're saying, I can invest some seed, I can invest in some sexual down payment, as it were, and I can still have a pure relationship. We violate this law in many other areas as well. We violate this when we have Arminian methodology in our evangelism. There must be something in here I'm allergic to because we're going to let Elizabeth tend this garden here. When we have Arminian methodology in our evangelism, which elevates man and depreciates the depravity of man, it should not be any wonder to us when we get lots of people who come and yet they abandon the Lord eventually. We don't tend to chase people away when we have that kind of methodology like Christ did. We violate this law in economics and politics and marriage and many other ways. And that's why Paul prefaces this in verse seven. He says, Do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever a man sows that he will also reap. And so there's a tendency to be deceived on this very point. You reap the same kind that you sow. Law 3 states that we reap a multiplied increase of what we sow. Now we saw this could be really scary when you're sowing sin, and it's supposed to be scary. And this can be very encouraging when you're sowing righteousness and you're thinking, oh man, I tried, but I'm so weak. You know, it's just a little mustard seed that I'm putting in here. And God says, don't worry about it. I always make a multiplied increase of whatever it is that you sow. Now, we applied this and saw that in the Reformation, that this applied very, very broadly. This was a revolutionary concept for them, which took them out of the economic stagnation of the Roman Catholic Church and brought about the free market that really stemmed from Calvinism, the free market principles that we looked at. Not only did it affect Economics, we saw it affected social theory, scientific optimism. Very basic, very simple law, and yet it had profound ramifications in society. And all six of these principles are at the core of Reformation. Theology and I believe we have got to grab hold of these principles if we're to see the kind of blessings that God Loves to pour into the lives of his people if we're going to see the kind of transformation that we long to see in the city we're going to look at the second part of that transformations video during the Sunday school period and I Be thinking about these laws of harvest. Can there be any city that is transformed apart from these laws? And I say no. It's absolutely impossible. And so hopefully that can maybe feed a little bit of our discussion. Law number four. We reap in a different season than we sow. And let me just give you a little bit of background for this law. Genesis 8 verse 22 promises that as long as earth remains, that there is going to be seed time and there is going to be harvest time and nothing's going to do away with that law. It's built right into the very fabric of creation. We don't like to wait, but we have to. James 5, 7 gives the general principle when it says, see how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, waiting patiently for it until it receives the early and the latter rain. And he says, hey, it's not just true for the farmer, it's true in all of life. And it's very obvious just from what we've said so far, I'm not going to be eating any squash today because that is trying to reap in the same season that I have planted. Now, we think it's obvious there. Why do we not see it as just as obvious in other areas of life? There is a nine-month wait for a baby. There is years before we're going to see the fruits of some of the things that we're investing in our children's lives. And Western civilization did not happen overnight, that knowledge base and the other things. That was something that happened by compounding growth over time. Now, we could simply end the sermon right here and go home with that application. But the reason I'm not going to end it is there is a tendency for us to see a principle but not apply it as vigorously as it needs to be applied. All of these six laws have almost a deceptive simplicity about them. People don't realize how profound they really are, how they impact all of life. They are truly revolutionary. In fact, I wish that there was a reconstructionist Maybe I'll have to do it, but some Reconstructionist who would write a book expanding on these six laws in every dimension of life. Nobody's written on it to my knowledge. The ones that have written on these six laws tend to be applying it in pietistic and very trivial ways. And some of what they say is true. But anyway, I've had to piece together from dozens of different books, North, Rush Dooney, Calvin, Luther, and others. And I want to start with a quote from Gary North. from his book, The Pirate Economy, he says, time is the resource. And we're dealing here with the law related to time. Time is the resource. The Protestant ethic, after all, was an attempt to deal with the limits of time. to see to it that it was not wasted. Protestant businessmen in the 16th and 17th centuries became convinced that thrift, hard work, foresight, rational calculation, and a close attentiveness to the ledgers would lead to a better and more productive world. This outlook permeated the West even after the theology of the Puritans faded. In another place, he said, the Industrial Revolution was a systematic attempt of capitalist entrepreneurs to redeem the time, not necessarily in a spiritual sense, but economically. He said, this is a very, very important principle. And it's my desire this morning to try to help you to evaluate to what extent you need to change your thinking, adjust your thinking in relationship to this law. And if you want to do some further reading, there's a lot of books you can read. But I especially want to recommend two, both of them by Gary North. First one is Millennialism and Social Theory. And the second book is titled Is the World Running Down? And he develops some of the themes that I'm going to be talking about this morning, as well as some others that I'm not going to be bringing up. What I want to do is I want to pull together some of the applications of this law under three headings, faith, hope, and love. And we're going to spend most of our time on hope because that's, I think, the major thrust of what this law is about. Let's start just by thinking about this principle and how it deals with hope or future orientation. If you've planted something and you know that it's only going to be reaped in a future season, then that means that there is, to some degree, you are being driven by the future. You're having expectations by the future. Every farmer is, to some extent, future-oriented. And if you think of this pot, if everybody waited till one hour before their meal to plant some squash, obviously, my children would be delighted, except for Joel and me. And Joel and I would be bummed out And if we applied that to every area of food production, what you would have in that society is a hunter-gatherer society that has a bare subsistence living, right? And there are some societies that are so present-oriented, everyone is simply a hunter-gatherer. They just are trying to eke out an existence from the land. the kind of approach that we're going to be looking at today. Ecclesiastes 11 verse 1 says, the farmer plants the seed has to wait for many days. Some things take many years. Psalm 72 talks about many generations before some things come to fruition. Now, there are two kinds of people in regard to farming. There are the farmers who produce the food and then there are the people who eat the food. There's two kinds of people when it comes to business. There are the producers and there are the consumers. And one of the reasons that we need division of labor is because it is almost impossible to be future-oriented in absolutely every area of life. We need others to do some of that thinking for us. In fact, the more future-oriented a society becomes, the more division of labor that you're going to find happening there. Now, let me give you a quote from Gary North in his book, Millennialism and Social Theory. He said, present orientation, that's the bad thing, OK? We're wanting future orientation. He says, present orientation is a denial of the very foundations of Western culture, respect for the past, and faith in the future. So he's saying this is an important law. This is something that lies at the very foundations of Western civilization. Let me say it lies at the foundation of godly dominion in an individual's life as well. Let me repeat that quote. Present orientation is a denial of the very foundations of Western culture. Respect for the past and faith in the future. Now I'm going to be hammering this first point because I do not want it to go in one ear and out the other. Very important principle, and I want you to be able to avoid the pitfalls of modern evangelicalism, which many people have pointed out, has become extremely present-oriented. Now, here's a few tests that you can take. You may think, hey, I'm very future-oriented. Well, let's test whether that's true or not. First test is the goal test. Do you have goals? for all of the different slices of your life? Do you have spiritual goals for your family and for yourself individually? Do you have financial goals, educational goals? Just looking at the various things in your life, do you have goals for them? And then the second thing, if you've done that, I think you're way in advance of most Americans. You've begun to have some future orientation. Do you have 20-year goals? And do you have 100-year goals? Now, you're the cream of the crop. If you've got 100-year goals, I mean, you're a real Puritan. You're a real reformer that has something like that. And in case you get discouraged, let me tell you that when I first married, I failed every one of those tests. I did not meet the goal test. I didn't have any goals. And it was partly because of my dispensational upbringing. We were taught we were going to get raptured at any time, and there was really no point in planning for the future. And it had infected me, even though I had been reformed for some years. And so you may be at zero. You may be at 10 or 20 on this one. Don't be discouraged. There's other tests as well. And maybe you'll do flying colors on this next one. This next test of whether you're future-oriented or present-oriented is the deferred gratification test. If you are future-oriented, you are very self-consciously going to be at times, sacrificing in the present so that you can have something in the future. And deferred gratification, foundational for Dominion economics and thinking. For example, instead of buying a brand new shiny car on a high loan that's just going to max out your budget so that you can enjoy this car now, the Dominion-oriented person is going to tend to drive around in an old junker for years until he saves up the money so that he can buy that car with cash. That's not always wrong. We're going to be seeing in a later point, there's times, especially with taxation and business, things like that, where a loan or a lease may be better. But the dominion-oriented person is going to tend to avoid gratifying his desires now so that he can have it in the future. In contrast, the present-oriented person, he wants it now, no matter how much it's going to harm his budget in the future, how much he's going to be saddled and strapped in the future. He says, yeah, there's going to be a harvest in the future. I'm just going to let other people take the harvest. I want to enjoy that right now. OK, what he cares about is not the pain he's going to suffer as he's paying credit card debt so much that he can't buy anything in the future. He wants to enjoy something now. Now let me just give you a biblical example of the opposite of deferred gratification. We want deferred gratification, here's the opposite. Ecclesiastes 8, verses 11 and following, let me start with verse 11. It says, because the sentence against an evil work, and this is not in economics, this has now to do with just life in general. Because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the hearts of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." Now Solomon is saying when governments don't have very quick trials and very quick executions, he's saying these present-oriented people are not going to be, it's not going to be a disincentive that there is going to be a penalty way down the road. because they tend to think in terms of the present. And one person said, if the wages of sin were paid immediately, sin would not be very popular. And I think that's very, very true. Because God's principle is, you sin, you're not going to reap right away. You're going to reap in due season. It's deferred. What happens is that the people and criminals tend to be present oriented. The people who are the most present oriented They're not going to care less the fact that they're going to suffer down the road. And we'll see this a little bit later on. That's one of the reasons, amongst several, why the scripture says there's got to be immediate punishment. Sometimes it was on the same day, sometimes the next day. Now, anyway, that text goes on to say, though a sinner does evil a hundred times and his days are prolonged. OK, there is that weight. Those days are prolonged. Yet I surely know that it will be well with those who fear God, who fear before him. But it will not be well with the wicked. Nor will he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he does not fear before God." See, there is going to be a judgment. He says there will be a harvest, and it's guaranteed in history. Present-oriented people, they're just not motivated by that. It's too far distant. By the way, this actually proves that all of us are to some degree present-oriented, if we sin. I don't know anybody here that doesn't sin. So that means we're all subject to present orientation because Sin always produces a harvest, the scripture says, and if we sin, that means we are more motivated by the present temptation and the power of that sin than we are by the pain that we're going to get down the road. So don't be pointing fingers. All of us, to some degree, are present-oriented. Now, because this principle of deferred gratification is so foundational to the application of this law. I'm going to give you several examples. My mother was a nurse, and she told me one time that there was a grown lady that she was taking care of. Actually, she was supposed to be taken care of, but this woman wouldn't let her. And this lady, I forget now what the disease was, whether it was rabies or something else, but she was going to, maybe it was a tetanus thing, I forget, but they said it's going to be an excruciatingly painful thing if you don't get this injection. You've got to get the injection. But this woman was so extremely present-oriented, all she could think about was the pain of that shot, that injection, and she was not going to get it. Here is a case where there is hugely vastly greater pain that she was going to face in the future. But because it was future, she didn't care. She just didn't want the pain right now. And there's many other examples that can be given along those lines. Communists in Ethiopia, I've seen examples where they were so demotivated by the communist system that when they were given, there was a famine, and they were given seed grain, they had other food that could have taken them through the year, but they feasted and feasted and feasted for weeks and months on the seed grain, and then they had nothing to plant. Present orientation. A present oriented person will engage in adultery now because the pain of divorce and losing his children is not something that motivates him strongly, or at least not as strongly as the present pleasure. Present-oriented people tend to, I think I've mentioned this already, buy more on their credit cards than they can pay off in a month, whereas future-oriented people, even though they will take loans, business loans and things like that, they tend to try to avoid that if possible. They have the discipline to save up for the future, even if it means doing without, going out for the restaurant, even if it means buying, you know, clothing at the thrift store. They've got this goal that eventually they want to be in a more relaxed mode. Now, I bet most of you have done fairly well on the deferred gratification test because it's a sign of maturity. Let me quote North again, this time from his commentary on Leviticus. He says, the child does not defer enjoyments in the present for the sake of greater wealth in his old age. Because of this, individuals who place a low value on the future do not save and invest as much money as individuals who place a high value on the future. The same is true of societies. Men get what they pay for. Those who want instant gratification at the expense of future gratification achieve their goal by spending on consumer goods and services rather than saving. Emotional maturity involves a recognition of the uncertainty of the future and also the present cost of attaining income in the future. Extreme present orientation is a mark of an immature person or an immature society. Now, how do you rate on these tests so far? Are you future-oriented? Are you driven by the future, or do you tend to be driven by the present? Even when we ask for patience from the Lord, and we ask the Lord to sanctify us, we want it instantly, don't we? How many of you saw the sign? I don't know if it was parables or whatever. It says, Lord, give me patience and give it to me right now. I think that's the attitude that we tend to have sometimes. Let's give another test. This is the discounted time test. And this is a balance to the previous one. The previous one says we defer things. We're saving for the future. But you're not future oriented if you defer everything. There are some things that you are going to want to enjoy now, because if you don't, it's going to depreciate in its value. And this is just a part of business. Bible indicates, for example, that a hoarder who never spends any of his income, a hoarder who never invests into the kingdom any of his income, he's not future oriented. You might think, oh yeah, he's just looking to the future, you know. No, he's not future oriented at all because he's not investing it in God's kingdom. And let me just give you an example. I think the selling of property in Jerusalem early in the book of Acts is an excellent illustration of this, because Christ had predicted that Jerusalem would be destroyed. And these people didn't know when it was going to happen, but they were selling their property because they knew once the Romans came in, this property would be worthless. So they were using something that has a greater value now than it would in the future. And it's just this principle of discounted time. Now, Gary North points out that discounted time, all it is, is interest. Discounted time is the whole rationale for the interest rate. He applies it to other areas. He says it's a universal principle. And let me quote this time from Leviticus, his commentary on Leviticus. He says, the interest rate is a universal category of human action. It is not a purely monetary phenomenon. It results from the inescapable discount that acting men place on the future. For example, a brand new Rolls-Royce automobile is worth more to me today than the same Rolls-Royce delivered a year from now is worth to me today. A bird in hand today is worth more than the same bird in hand in a year. This rate of discount of future goods is against physically identical goods that are in our possession today is the rate of interest. It does not apply to money alone, just as the text of Leviticus indicates. It applies to food. And by extension, all goods and services. Interest on charitable loans is prohibited in the case of money, services, or goods, a recognition in God's law of the universality of the interest rate phenomenon. Now, how you use money will indicate then to what degree you are future oriented. For that matter, whether you allow food to mold in the refrigerator will show I probably shouldn't tell stories on my mother, but we always tease her that she just can't bear to throw anything away. So if she didn't want to use it, she sticks it in the refrigerator so that it'll mold. And once it's moldy, then she can throw it out with a good conscience. Now, that's not entirely fair, probably, but that's what we've always teased her on. God a proper perspective on the future on this discounted time. He's gonna have no problem throwing things away giving things away using things or Saving things because he's going to understand the balance of these principles. Okay Let's let's move on other tests a doctor on the mission field who burns himself out by treating every patient that comes along and is eventually going to grow discouraged and realize he is barely making a dent on the things he's trying to make. Now, in contrast, he's going to be present-oriented. In contrast, the doctor who refuses to treat everybody who happens to come to his doorstep, he has triage of which are the most important cases. He doesn't treat all the time. He trains some orderlies and some other people to come alongside and do some of his work. He's going to initially be treating less people, but ultimately will be treating more. That's a future-oriented concept. The evangelism. If you look at the budgets of most churches, and you can see in magazines the statistics of what churches will spend their budgets on, you will find that by far the vast amount of money that is spent by churches is spent on on evangelistic methods that bring from two to five percent of the results in. And the reason that they do it is because there's high visibility. It's things like crusades and Sunday school and other things like that. But they will spend that VBS. They will spend it because it has good visibility. It's attractive. It's popular. but then they will avoid the discipleship kind of method that Christ used that has far greater potential. Take the education test. Are you future-oriented or are you present-oriented in education? You've got to examine the different models. And what is the long-term outcome going to be? We've got to be driven by the future rather than just saying, well, this is more expensive, this is cheaper. We've got to say, what is the long-term results? That's what should drive our decisions now. You could take the budget test to see how much it drives you. Of course, if you don't have a budget, then you've already gone down in terms of the evaluation of present orientation. You could take the eternity test. I think this is the ultimate test. To what degree are you driven by the promises that Scripture gives of laying up treasures in heaven? Now, if you're present oriented, that's so far off. That's going to be meaningless to you. And it's a sign of maturity. The more mature you are, the more you're going to be driven by the fact that what you do right now either does or does not lay up treasures in heaven. It gives you a foundation, a jump start, as it were, in eternity by which you'll be able to take dominion more effectively than other people who go into eternity. And you say, right down here, we're so present-oriented. That just doesn't drive us at all. Maturity is something that we need to be able to achieve that. In fact, let me give you an antidote to what robs us of this future orientation. Several things that do. Immaturity is one. Selfishness is another. Lack of a steward's heart. But I think in the American church, probably the main thing that robs people of future orientation is a bad theology. And especially eschatology, which is the doctrine of the future. And I think it's ironic. that partial preterists and historicists, in their interpretation of eschatology, tend to be the most future-oriented, and the people who consider themselves futurists tend to be the most present-oriented. It's just an interesting little observation there. And the hyper-preterists many times fall into that as well, but we won't go down that road. Here is the point. It is rare to find people who are enthusiastic about a project they know is going to fail. It just makes sense. It's rare to find people. In fact, I've never found anybody that's enthusiastic about a project they know is going to fail. When we see a purpose for what we are doing, we see that there is hope of success, our energies are redoubled. And one of the motivators toward holiness is being convinced that the end result of God's purpose in our lives of maturity Holiness will be achieved that he will he has begun a good work and you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ Romans 8 25 says but if we hope for what we do not see Then we eagerly wait for it with perseverance. He says when you've got a solid hope man, is it going to give you a perseverance? It's going to give you eagerness and the thing that you're doing that eschatology deals with hope First Thessalonians 1.3 speaks of the patience of hope. Hebrews 6.11 speaks of the diligence of hope. And so we need to judge the character of our eschatology, of our hope, by whether it produces diligence, whether it produces patience, eagerness, and perseverance. Let's just take it in our own personal lives. When I was a teenager, I remember many times being so discouraged and feeling like I would never grow in holiness. That I felt like throwing in the towel and just giving it up, say, what's the point of even trying? I just keep failing all the time. Now, of course, the Holy Spirit wouldn't let me. But because I had faulty views about sanctification, whether it was possible for me to achieve that, I constantly found it spiritually destructive within me. Now, when we're convinced by the scripture that there will be a harvest in our lives, that we will be mature. Then it says, it gives us diligence. Hebrews 6.11, patience. First Thessalonians 1.3, perseverance. Romans 8.25, Romans 12.12 says rejoicing in hope. Hebrews 6.19 says this hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast. He's saying it's a tremendous motivator for a person to grow in holiness when he is driven by the picture that God has in his life that this is achievable. One of the reasons I spend so much time in counseling, giving hope to people who have lost all hope is you cannot counsel a person who doesn't have hope. You can tell him all about the harvest. If he's convinced he's never going to get there, you're not going to get anywhere with him. He won't be motivated to work on the things that he's trying to work through. And so this passage in Galatians says, we shall reap if we do not lose heart. He says that is the antidote to hopelessness. Now, look at Galatians 6. I want to point out that what's true of the individual is also true of society. We are supposed to have an impact upon society. Galatians 6.10 says we are to do good, not just to the church, we're to do good to all men, to the jerk down the street that doesn't look like he's going to have any possibility of being benefited by the things that I'm doing. We're to do good to all men. Why? I mean, if society is going down the tubes, why should we bother doing good to all men? Well, look at verse 10. Paul says there's going to be a harvest. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. Now notice that therefore, he's just been talking about the guarantees of this harvest. The therefore applies to what we are investing, sowing in the lives of our society. He's saying there will be a harvest. We can bank on it. We can count on it. Now, there are Christians who are not convinced of that. And so they don't even bother reaping. And I want to give you some quotes so you can see. These are famous people. I'm not taking it out of context. You can look at the fact I've got a whole handout. You can look at similar quotes to this. We have reached the point of no return. We are on an irreversible course for world disaster. Now, if a Christian really, really believed that, then it would be extremely difficult for him to be motivated to plant righteousness in soil. He'd have the motivation robbed from him. Just think of this illustration. Because of the vision that was given to the Pharaoh, Joseph knew that there was going to be seven years of drought. Do you think that Joseph planted any seed during those seven years? I just cannot imagine he would waste one seed planting during those seven years because he knew none of it would germinate. Well, that's what Salem Kurban is saying about society in general. He says, don't bother investing in your society. Don't bother planting good things into the lives of others because it's all going down the toilet. There's no harvest that you're going to be given. Can you see how your theology will impact what you're going to do with your society? Several men, J. Vernon McGee, Hal Lindsey, have used the phrase, don't polish brass on a sinking ship. They say, forget about it. You can't have an impact. Our culture is going down. It's sinking. Let's just win souls, and that's all we're going to focus on. OK? Let me give you a couple of other quotes. In Dominion Theology, Blessing or Curse, Wayne House and Tommy Ice argue against people like myself. And they say on page 340, God has not given the church a proper dose of grace to Christianize the world. I can just imagine God sitting up in heaven and saying, don't point the finger at me, it's your fault. It's not my fault, it's your fault. Anyway, he goes on, on page 7 he says, I now know that God has not been pleased to give the necessary graces to his church for the kind of victory dominionists decree. On page 351 he says, We believe the reason for this lack of success is that God has not given the church the necessary tools and graces to establish an earthly kingdom. He just didn't accidentally say it once, three times and you're out, three strikes and you're out. He's basically saying, don't plant. There's no point. God's not going to give us a harvest. Now, Reformed writer Joseph Balliat sought to counter this and to give encouragement to the church through his book. And he says, the church has been paralyzed by its false short-term, talking about present orientation, false short-term, pessimistic, predestined view of the future. The enthroned Christ, who has been given all power and authority and dominion, has stretched forth his mighty hand to the paralyzed cripple and said, arise, take up your mat and walk. Now we may feel like that cripple, but he's saying to us, do it. Stretch out your hand. Invest in this society. It may look like it's a hopeless cause, but I can guarantee you, when you sow, it will bring forth a fruit in your individual life. It will bring forth fruit in your family, in your church, in your society. We've got to take God at His word. Charles Spurgeon, the famous Baptist preacher, agrees with me 100% on this. He said, I myself believe that King Jesus will reign and the idols be utterly abolished, for I expect that the same power which turned the world upside down once will still continue to do it. The Holy Ghost would never suffer the imputation to rest upon his holy name, but he was not able to convert the world. And I say, amen. Hallelujah. Bring it on, Lord. And we want to be a part of planting the seed that will achieve that harvest. Your harvest will be as limited. Read the prayer of Jabez. Your harvest will be as limited as what you sow in the field today. Okay? So, when you're failing to sow this day, down the road when it's due season, you're not going to be having a harvest. When you just sow a little bit today, down the road in your harvest, you're just going to get a proportionate amount. So your vision is what determines the kind of harvest you're going to have. What you want to see down in the road is going to drive what you are going to be planting today. Here's a quote from an anonymous source. It says, a vision without a task is a dream. And I would say it's an empty dream. Vision without a task is a dream. A task without a vision is a drudgery. A vision with a task is the hope of the world. And that is the kind of vision that God sets before us. You know, many people, God bless them, I think that they have become utterly uninterested in eschatology because they have seen so many failed predictions by people who are dispensationalists who say, you know, 1977, you know, this is going to happen, 1981, 1988, 1991, you know, all the way down the road. And after a while they become disillusioned. They say, I'm not even going to bother studying eschatology, it's worthless. Proverbs says, hope deferred makes the heart sick. That's what's happened to these people. They've had hope upon hope upon hope, and it's just been deferred and dashed to the ground, and eventually they say, I'm sick of it. I'm not going to study eschatology anymore. But Paul says, we must study eschatology. 1 Corinthians chapter 15 tells us every enemy will be brought under the feet of Jesus Christ through the church's efforts, and he ends that chapter by saying, this is the reason we can have hope. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor in the Lord is not in vain. Can you see how future orientation drives everything that we do or fails to drive it if you don't have it? This is very, very important. I want you to prayerfully think through your life and begin asking God to help you to be driven more by the future than the present. Now, let's very, very quickly deal with faith and love. If we have a promised harvest that's in a different season, If we just have instant gratification, you know, where God instantly, we put the seed in, it instantly comes up, it doesn't require nearly as much faith as if there's a big delay. And we say, hey, I've prayed and God's not done anything, or I've invested and God's not done anything. When there is this delay between the sowing and the reaping, we have to have faith that God is going to follow through. So let's look at this faith in different areas. First of all, we have to have faith that God sends sanctions in history. Now, a sanction is simply God's, a negative sanction would be God's punishment of sin. Positive sanction would be God's reward of righteousness. We have to believe that God will bring sanctions in history. Let me tell you, past millennials don't believe that. They can't. It's utterly illogical. It's utterly contradictory to their system, because what they are saying is that people can sin and sin as much as they want during this present time. In fact, Hoikema, I better not quote. There's one essay I wrote. He was very explicit about this, that yes, during the exodus, God punished sin. And in the future, he will. But now, during this present time, there is no cause and effect relationship between sin and the things that come in life. There are no sanctions. And Scripture says, of course there are sanctions. Even Galatians 6 here implies it. He says, don't be deceived. God is not mocked. He's saying, God stands behind these laws. And to say that we have to have faith that there are sanctions in history is saying God puts His money where His mouth is. He says, okay, I'm putting my law out there. You nations need to follow this law. But He also brings His power and His hand to back up that law. That's all that sanctions is saying. God is saying you cannot get away with what you're doing just because you think like that Ecclesiastes 11 that you're getting away with it because there's a due season. You have to wait for it does not mean it's going to get away. But here's the upshot of it. We have to believe that when people sow righteousness in the nation, eventually it's going to fall apart like the Tower of Babel. We have to believe that when the righteous sow righteousness into their culture, eventually, if they do not give up, if they do not lose heart, there is going to be a transformation of that culture. That's something that takes faith because it's such a long distance away. Let me give you just one example of how people tend to be deceived on this very point. Numbers 32, 23, be sure your sins will find you out. They were thinking it wouldn't. But Ecclesiastes 8, let me read that for you again, in verse 11. It says, "...because the sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." They say, hey, we can sin with impunity, we're getting away with everything. because they're present-oriented, right? He says, "...though a sinner does evil a hundred times, and his days are prolonged," there is that wait for the harvest, "...those days are prolonged, yet I surely know," here is faith, "...I surely know that it will be well with those who fear God," who fear before Him, "...but it will not be well with the wicked, nor will he prolong his days." He's talking about history here. He's not talking about eternity. Nor will he prolong his days, which are as a shadow, because he does not fear God." We must reject pessimilennialism. Now, all of us do. But we've got, as a church in Omaha, we need to help others to see this. This is one of the passions of my heart, to share the blessing. One pastor told me, when he finally became convinced of this future, the future blessings that God promised, it was like a revolution in his life, because now he's got far more faith to believe great things from God. okay, as well as to attempt great things for him. So we need to be sharing this with other people. It is important. You cannot be, let people get away with saying, oh, I'm a pan-millennialist, it'll all pan out. I said, no, it will not pan out. It will not pan out if you are not sowing. because you only reap what you sow. We've got to adjust our thinking on this area. Gary North loves to mock economists who are trying to craft the system in such a way where they can They can do economics that violates God's laws and not have the consequences. They constantly see the negative consequences of their economic policies, you know, Keynesian and whatnot. They're trying to divorce the two. And Norse says it's impossible. Why? Because God is a God of sanctions. He guarantees there will be a harvest. Okay, second. Area of faith, it means we must trust that there is linear progress in history. Gary North says, it was the post-millennial optimism of the early Calvinism and English Puritanism that first introduced this worldview of culture-wide, compounding, covenantal growth to Western civilization. And that's what Galatians here says, we will reap, we do not lose heart. Psalm 37, 45, delight yourself also in the Lord and he shall give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in him and he shall bring it to pass. He shall bring it to pass. Proverbs 11.18 says, the wicked man does deceptive work, but he who sows righteousness will have a sure reward. You plant righteousness, he says, I'm going to guarantee you're going to have a reward. And we tend to doubt that. Why? Simply because there's a gap between the time that we plant something in the ground and the time that we receive the harvest. Realize that's the principle of life. That's not an aberration. That's the way God works. But let's end by showing very quickly the Law of Harvest was intended to be applied, not selfishly, but in the context of love. If you take a look at verse 6, you see it was loving investing into the life of the pastor. If you look at verse 10, he ends this section by saying, we need to lovingly invest in the life of the church. We need to lovingly invest in the lives of unbelievers. Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith. So he's talking about giving beyond ourselves in ways that may not immediately benefit us. They will benefit others. But he's talking about investing in ways that are going to have long-term impact. Let me just give you an illustration. My dad was a missionary for 30 years in Ethiopia, and he always, wherever he went, tried to invest in ways that would benefit missionaries and make their life easier down the road. He always built houses that would last. The only house that's standing in Dharami still the house my dad built. He always planted fruit trees. In fact, he planted trees in stations that he knew he would never taste the fruit from those trees, but he planted them because he wanted other missionaries to be able to taste from those. Now, sometimes missionaries benefited, appreciated, I mean, they all benefited, and sometimes not so much. I was really frosted by one of the missionaries. He was just a short-termer that came into a station, and this was a place where my dad added value to that station as well, 50 years before, a missionary had planted trees all over the place in beautiful symmetry and he had planted fruit trees and all kinds of things. Here comes this missionary from very present oriented from Australia. He was used to wide open spaces and he didn't want his view blocked. He chopped down all the trees that had grown there for 50 years. And when he was asked, why did you do this? I mean, this is something the missionaries have enjoyed for years. Oh, I was blocking my view. Present orientation. But it's not loving either. And that was the point I was bringing up the thing here. We've got to invest in a way where we think, Am I expressing love to God? Am I expressing love to others? How is this benefiting the lives of others? And I want our church to be so gripped with a long-term vision of what God can do in this city that we're willing as a church to invest in other churches. We're willing to invest in our city in ways that we may not see from a human perspective any tangible returns into our church. No tangible money returns, no tangible people returns. Let me just use Liberty Christian Church as an example. That is a church that has had a vision for blessing this city. And they've done so in many different ways. Let me just give you two. Every other week they have pastors that they will We have prayer meeting together and afterwards they pay for our lunch. But once a year they put on this huge lavish banquet where they will invite pastors and their wives and they just seek to build us up and encourage us knowing that Satan goes after pastors and they need this encouragement. So at this banquet, they may give, like they gave Kathy, a big bouquet of flowers and a hundred dollar check, so just spend it any way that you want. And you might think, now this is daffy. Why would a church do that? They're expending all kinds of money. They're not going to get anything in return. I mean, pastors aren't going to help them to build their church. How are they getting anything in return? But you know what they're driven by? They're driven by the principle that Christ gave in Matthew, I think it's chapter 10, that he who receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward. And they're saying, we're investing in God's kingdom. And by faith and through love, we believe God's going to be bringing back into this congregation far more. And it is no wonder to me that Liberty Christian Center is a tiny little congregation had a great vision, very future-oriented, and they bought a building that was a huge property. Everybody been down there? Liberty Christian. Huge property. They purchased that thing. They have had all kinds of members coming in. They've had their finances increased. God has done miracle after miracle in their lives. Even this past winter, when their finances were so low from blessing the church, I think they spent $40,000 on that picnic and the fireworks and everything there just for church members to go to. And they had some really low numbers coming out. What was it? $40,000? No. A bill for gas, I think, $40,000. And it's just astronomical, some of the figures that they have had. that God has carried them through. See, when we are willing to serve and to bless in the name of Christ, when we're willing to invest through faith, through hope, and through love, God says, I will pour back into your life far more than you can hold. I'm going to bring a harvest into your life that is so rich, you're just going to be amazed at the at the lack, at the barrenness that your life had before when you were holding on to things. God says, give it up. It's mine anyway. Give it as a stewardship trust and do things in this city that will benefit others. Do things that will benefit your children 50 years from now. You may not immediately taste the fruits of it, but that's love. That's investing in love. You're saying, I want my children to benefit. I just hate that bumper sticker that says I'm spending my children's inheritance. It's horrible. It's ungodly. We need to, in love, be investing in our children's lives. And one of the things we can do is we can give money anonymously to train ourselves to avoid the immediate gratification. Not a soul's going to know. I've given money to this person. Nobody's going to know where it came from. Only God knows. But I'm laying up treasures in heaven. You're saying, I want to be driven by the future. Lord, help me to be driven by the future. So hopefully this has been a helpful sermon, and I just want to exhort you to invest into God's kingdom in faith, hope, and love. Amen. Let's pray. Father God, there is so much material to cover, and I feel so inadequate in being able to give such a comprehensive worldview in such a short span of time. But I pray, Lord, that some of the seed that I have sowed this morning into the lives of these people would be raised up into an incredible harvest in their lives, in the city as a whole, in your kingdom, perhaps around this world. Father, I pray that you would just transform our thinking. What an exciting thing it is as we see these principles of harvest being lived out in the lives of other people who have been gripped by them. Help us to be gripped by them, Lord. Bless us as your people and expand our borders. I pray that we may be able to serve with greater responsibility than we have been able to serve to this point. Father, we long for the privilege of being able to disciple more Christians. We long for greater impact. But Father, right along with that, we'll be destroyed if you give us greater responsibilities, if you do not also make your blessing and your hand to rest with us. Lord, keep us from all evil, and help us as a congregation, as individuals, not to bring pain. May we, Father, glorify you in all that we think and say and do. Help us to invest to your glory. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.