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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.
Laws of Harvest, Part 4
Series Christian and Prosperity
| Sermon ID | 1241812204710 |
| Duration | 56:38 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Galatians 6:6-10 |
| Language | English |
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