Grace Alone (Part 13): Perseverance - What are you sowing?

There is uh some literature that has made the rounds in kind of organizational leadership, business leadership over the last few years, and the thinking has been that people need to focus on what they're calling lead indicators instead of lagging indicators.

And this is pretty straightforward, pretty obvious, but the idea is that a leading indicator is something that will impact your final result that you want.

But if we focus on lagging indicators, the result, we'll never get the result we want.

So, for example, in education, if you're an educator and you say, I want people to test better in reading, what you would do is you would say, instead of we're just going to try to help people read better, we are going to focus on what are some of the leading indicators that may help kids actually improve their reading scores.

Do we hire more tutors?

Do we spend more time reading?

And then you'd measure that rather than just the lagging indicator of a reading score.

Or if you're in the construction industry and you say, what we value, what we really want, is we want safety to be one of our key things as we move forward.

And so for you, safety's your your lagging indicator.

What you'd do is you'd say, we're going to focus on some leading indicators, some things that would impact the performance and safety of our organization.

Now, this is something that is not beyond just common sense.

But like I said, it's become kind of a vogue thought in organizational or business leadership.

And it really is a biblical idea because in Galatians chapter 6, verses 6 through 10 that we just heard read, what we see is we see this idea of sowing and reaping, that if we take care of a leading indicator, sowing, that we'll have a lagging indicator, reaping later in our life.

Galatians 6:6–10

And this idea is taught in other places in the Bible as well.

It's taught in Proverbs, it's taught in Psalms.

In fact, one commentator says that this idea is taught 66 different times in the Bible.

Now, if you've been with us this fall, one of the things we've been doing is we've been working our way through the book of Galatians.

And Galatians is a book that's all about grace.

In fact, one of the reasons that we chose to do this book is 500 years ago this fall, the reformation happened, which was all about a revolution in understanding grace, that we don't come to God and get something because of what we do.

We come to God and receive because of what Jesus Christ has done.

And when we come to understand that, what happens is it revolutionizes the way that we live.

And so we've been studying this book, and just to give a very quick summary, here's verse 10 of chapter 3, 10 and 11, and then verse 13.

It says, for all of you who rely on the works of the law are under a curse.

In other words, if you try to gain your standing with God by keeping the standards, it says you're under the under a curse.

Because it's written, cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the book of the law.

The reason you're under the curse, you can't possibly keep it all.

Clearly, no one who relies on the law is justified before God because the righteous will live by faith.

Verse 13, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for as it is written, cursed is everyone who's hung on a pole, or cursed is everyone who's hung on a tree.

See, the message of grace of the gospel of Galatians is that we don't get what we deserve.

So why does Paul now, when he comes to the end, say, God is not mocked, don't be deceived.

Whatsoever a person sows, this they'll also reap.

There are leading and lagging indicators.

Why does God, through Paul, bring this point out right here?

Do you see the tension?

And what I want to do today very simply is point out two mistaken ways of thinking about life, about how things work that are tied to this idea.

And the first is this, and this is what Paul's really addressing right here in this text, and that is when we think that grace means that what I do doesn't matter.

You see, what could happen is you could read the book of Galatians, and as you read the book of Galatians, what you could do is you could start to say, since it's all grace, since it's all what God has done through Jesus Christ, then what I do doesn't matter at all.

I can live any way I want and begin to see grace, begin to see God's work as almost a heavenly visa or debit card.

Do you know what I mean?

Where you can say, I can go out, I can do whatever I want, and I can take the visa card and I can just swipe it later and get God to forgive me of anything that I've done that isn't good, and I'll be okay.

But what we see in this passage is that there are some realities of sowing and reaping, of leading and lagging indicators.

And here's the first reality, and that is that we will reap what we sow.

You will reap what you sow.

That's what this says.

Very simply, very straightforwardly.

Whatever you sow, this you will also reap.

You sow to the flesh, you'll reap from the flesh.

You sow to the spirit, you'll reap from the spirit.

By the way, that's an allusion back to chapter 5, where we have the acts of the flesh and the fruit of the spirit described.

And what that's saying is whatever you do as a leading indicator will come back into your life.

And what doesn't happen is forgiveness or grace doesn't just negate that.

So, for example, if I were to decide to eat a pizza every night before I go to bed, just to say, you know what, I just like pizza, I'm gonna eat a pizza every night before I go to bed.

Now, what would happen is my girth would grow.

And I can pray and get forgiven for the sin of gluttony, but I'm still gonna keep expanding if I keep eating the pizza.

It doesn't negate what choices I've made.

Grace doesn't negate the choices I've made.

So we reap what we sow, we reap more than we sow.

And this is because of the harvest language here, that a seed goes into the ground, and when it comes forth, it has a greater return than what it initially was.

So whatever we sow, we'll actually reap more than we sow, and then we'll reap later than we sow.

And we don't even have to look very far to see an illustration of this.

The powerful men who have been exposed in recent days for the things that they have done in the past.

Where what they sowed appeared to not be a big deal, and then all of a sudden it is.

And so we reap what we sow, we reap more than we sow, and we reap later than we sow.

And what grace doesn't do is it does not erase the consequences of sin.

But what grace does do is it erases the legal penalty for sin.

In other words, when you and I sin, there's a legal penalty in our standing before God, but what grace does is it takes that away without taking away all of the consequences, and grace helps us restore the broken relationship that we have with God when we sin.

And so sowing and reaping, what we sow, what we work on as a leading indicator, makes a difference in our lives.

I was thinking about this the other day, and one of the things I've noticed is that that older people, um, and there's nothing wrong with aging, I'm aging, so so when I say older, I just mean people beyond me a little bit or wherever, have a harder time putting on socks without sitting down.

Have you ever noticed this?

And I know a lot of women don't wear socks, but sometimes you wear those little no-show things that you put on or whatever it is.

And and so you have a harder time uh basically putting on your socks without sitting down.

And I decided a while ago, it's like, you know what, I don't want to have to sit down to put on my socks.

So I started standing up every time I put on my socks as a little leading indicator of my balance and dexterity of being able to say, I can still stand up and put on my socks.

Now, that's a goofy thing, I freely admit it.

But but what I'm saying is you know that this principle's true, even in something that simple.

And when it comes to bigger things, you know it's true.

If you don't invest in your most important relationships, in a marriage, in relationships with your kids, your best friends, you know that in time that relationship doesn't have the same substance that it once had.

And you know that that if you don't don't take care of certain things in your life, like your health, that it impacts you down the road.

And so you understand this principle.

And you know that it works at even a deeper level than just the obvious.

One of the things I've seen over the years in being a pastor is I've talked to men who've who've started to use or or uh found themselves looking at pornographic images.

And what always happens when when men start that is their their first thought is, you know what, I'm not having as much excitement in my home life as I thought I would, and so I'm gonna look at some images, and that those images are just gonna help me kind of navigate that.

But what ends up happening is that after looking at those images, they realize, maybe not right away, maybe later, maybe more than even they know, that they have a harder time having a real relationship with a real woman because they're always using fantasy as an escape.

See, we sow what we reap.

If we sow, we reap what we sow, if we sow to the flesh, we'll reap from it.

If we sow to the spirit, we'll reap from that as well.

Now, often when you hear this taught, even this passage, what will happen is people will drive this point home harder right here, and they'll say, This is the law of the harvest.

These are the laws of the harvest.

And so live by them.

But I think there's something else that needs to be said here, another mistake.

Because if you stop here, what happens is your view, your take on spiritual life or just life in general will become very mechanical.

And so this leads to the second mistake, and that is sowing and reaping means that only what I do matters.

So one mistake is saying grace means that what I do doesn't matter.

The other mistake is saying this idea of sowing and reaping means that only what I do matters.

In Eastern religion, there's a there's a thought that's called karma.

I'm sure you've heard of it.

And karma is a simple idea.

It means what you do is what you get.

And if you simply take what I just said, what Galatians 6, verses 6 through 10, seem to say, what you could do is you could come away with a Christian version of karma.

Galatians 6:6–10

And a Christian version of karma is basically the idea that says, okay, God saves me from my sins, but now what I do will determine everything else in my life, and I'm the only thing that will determine that, because what I sow, I'll reap.

And that's understandable why sometimes you could get that way of thinking, but but I want to push back on that because when you look at the whole teaching of the Bible, I don't think that that is a summation of all.

Because we live in a fallen, broken world, sometimes there are horrible things that happen to people who didn't do something that brought that about.

And sometimes there are people who do things that you would look at and say, that deserves some kind of an immediate punishment, and yet they seem to have years and years and years of good things that seem to happen in their lives.

And so we have to ask the question, how does this work?

Now, biblically, let me just tell you why I think that there's a bigger principle here than just the idea of sowing and reaping.

Proverbs, as I mentioned, is a book that basically says, do this and good things will happen.

But even Proverbs acknowledges, if you read it through closely, that sometimes that the things that you put into your life don't always work out exactly as you think they should.

And in one of the best examples of this, we see in Job that Job, although he had great things in his life, and according to Job chapter 1, verse 1 and 2, was righteous and feared God and he was upright.

Job 1:1

In other words, the text goes out of its way to say Job didn't deserve what's about to happen, and then he loses his family, he loses his wealth, he loses his health.

And then what happens is his three friends come.

I'm giving you a summation of Job chapter 1 through chapter 42 here in a couple sentences.

Job 1 · chapter mention

His three friends come.

And when his three friends come, what do they do?

They basically come and say, Hey, you know what?

Christian karma at work here, buddy.

You should have been more upright.

But what does the text say?

It says you were upright.

His friends come and they say, you know what, if you just repent, then God would restore all of your health.

He says, I have examined myself.

I don't think there's anything here that's off, is what he says.

And when you read through the text, the point of it is that Job didn't deserve the suffering that came into his life.

At least not in that sense.

And then there's Jesus.

In Luke chapter 13, we're told about an instance where a tower fell and crushed some people.

Luke 13 · chapter mention

And Jesus was asked by some of his followers about it.

They said, Well, what's up?

Well, why did this why did this happen?

Who sinned?

Was it them or their parents?

Do you know what Jesus' response was?

He said, Neither.

And what he was doing was he was saying, you can't draw a straight line from your sinfulness to suffering in this world, that it isn't always a direct line.

And here's why this is so important.

If you simply take the idea of sowing and reaping and say, this is how it works, Christian karma is at work, what you will do is you will either become incredibly proud when things go well for you and self-righteous and smug, or you will become somebody who is absolutely devastated when something goes wrong.

Because you will believe that what you have done is what has either given you the success, or what you have done is what has kept you from having whatever it is that you think you should have.

Now you may ask the question, well, if that's how that works, then what's the point?

And in fact, I think that's part of the point of this passage.

Here's what he says, verse 9 let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we don't give up.

So what's he saying?

He's saying, here's what I want for you.

I want you not to grow weary in doing the right thing, not to give up in doing the best things, because at the right time you will reap.

And here's what this points to a couple of issues.

One is the issue of timing.

When you're tempted to give up, you have to remember that that this idea of sowing and reaping, although there's not always a straight line in this life, there is a time when God will make things right.

And one of the ways that we see this is in this passage.

He says, if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap from the Spirit eternal life.

In other words, it may not even be in this life.

It may be in the life to come.

But God will one day make sure that what you have sown you will reap.

Even if there's not always a one-to-one correlation now that we can see.

But there's not only that, there's the issue of visibility.

And what I'm referring to here is sometimes you'll look at somebody's life and you'll say, Well, well, well, the way that they live, the way that they do things, they shouldn't have the success that they have.

Or that person has been great, and now look at all of the difficulty they're in.

And so you'll be tempted to say, say it doesn't make sense.

But the issue of visibility says that sometimes we can't see what's really happening.

Sometimes people who look like they have perfect lives are in complete turmoil on the inside, and sometimes people who have incredible turmoil are experiencing things in terms of peace that transcends even their understanding in ways that we can't understand or see.

And then there's the issue of unknowns.

And what I mean when I say that is just that sometimes we don't know what could have been versus what is.

Because what sowing and reaping means is that what I do today will impact tomorrow.

And what I did yesterday impacts today.

And sometimes we just look at things and we don't think about the leading indicators or the sowing that we did in the past that may have helped us get to where we are today, and we'll therefore be tempted to say it doesn't matter for the future.

But again, verse 9 says, Don't give up, don't lose heart, because it's always worth it to sow to the spirit over sowing to the flesh.

And again, why this is so important is if if you don't put these two things together, and this is what's sometimes hard about Bible interpretation, reading, is we want to read something and just say, Well, there it is.

It's like that all the time for everybody, but there's more nuance, and if we don't get the nuance, what'll happen is we will become that proud person who says, you know what, if everyone would just do it like me, then everything in the world would be better, or we'll get devastated.

Devastated when something doesn't work out.

I was thinking about this the other day.

I was thinking about a family I know who lives in another state.

And I've known this family for some time, and they've raised their kids.

Their kids are now late teens, early 20s.

And this family had really invested in their kids, and and they were in that that zone where they basically were proud of their kids and saying to everybody, basically, you should raise your kids like we raise our kids, because if you raise your kids like we raise our kids, then you know your kids would be better and the world would be better.

You know people like that, any of you?

Like you're thinking, yeah, I've got family coming this year.

And so, yes, I know people like that.

And and and and it was a natural thing.

Their kids were great and they were so proud.

And then one of their kids chose a different path.

Walked away from the church, shut the family out, began to use drugs, dropped out of school, found a whole new crowd.

And do you know what happened to that family?

They went from proud to devastated in a heartbeat because in their theology there was a one-to-one correlation.

If we do the right things, we put the right things in, we'll get the right result immediately.

Rather than being able to say sowing and reaping doesn't mean it's only up to me.

There are other things.

But there is also reason not to give up or lose heart because if I do the right things over time, what the Bible seems to indicate is that there will be a day when God will say, you know what, I'm gonna make sure that there's something positive that comes back into your life.

And like I said, we've got to be careful here.

Because what grace means is that we don't get what we deserve.

And so at the center of the Christian message is this idea that says, what you deserve you don't get because Jesus paid for it on the cross.

And that's what we celebrate week after week when we worship that Jesus pays for us what we could never pay.

And yet, Paul here at the end of Galatians says, I don't want you to be deceived.

God's not mocked.

What you sow, you'll also reap.

Now there's one more thing that's important here, and that is in verse 6 and verse 10, which kind of bracket this passage, we see that he alludes to these things in the context of money.

Verse 6 Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor, talking about probably the local church and giving money so that the way that that operates can be funded.

And then verse 10, talking about generosity in general.

Therefore, as we have an opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

And so what happens here in Galatians is that Paul is basically saying, look, sowing and reaping is a universal idea, but I also want you to see it in terms of finance, that it matters for how you use your money.

Here's what 2 Corinthians chapter 9 says that parallels this very well.

2 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

Says this, verse 6, remember this.

Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.

Each of you should give what you've decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly, not under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

And so what he's saying here very simply is he's saying, Listen, I want you to know that when you are generous, God works.

But when you're stingy, you also experience the result of that in your life.

And then we see again this same idea in Proverbs chapter 3, verse 9 and 10.

Proverbs 3:9

Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops.

Then your barns will be filled to overflowing and your vats will brim over with new wine.

That was an agricultural society, so to say, uh, bring the first fruits of your crops was like saying, bring the first portion of your income.

Bring what you have so that God can bless it.

And here's what I can tell you from years of being a pastor, and that is, I've not seen people regret tithing who have chosen to do it and stuck with it.

What I've heard people say over and over again is I would never go back to not doing it because I've seen God do more with the 90% that I had left than he did with the money that I kept before.

We do something here at Orchard Hill every year that we call year-end giving.

And you might think that that's all about just getting money for the church, and certainly there are projects, and you'll hear about that in just a moment.

But really, it's about something much greater than that, and that is it's about the people who call this their church home, having an opportunity just to again prioritize and right-size their resources, their funding for the year.

Just being able to say, you know what?

I'm going to sow into something big, something bigger than me.

Now, we say this almost every year.

If Orchard Hill isn't your church, or if you're not convinced, give to something else.

This isn't about Orchard Hill.

This is about you saying, I want to sow and take care of that area of my life as well as other areas of my life and trust God in those areas.

So I'm going to pray, and then uh Pete Mendez is going to come in Wexford, who served on our elder board, to talk about some of the projects here.

Joel and Brady will talk about the projects in Butler and in the strip district.

So would you pray with me?

Father God, we ask very simply that you would help us to understand that grace doesn't mean that what I do doesn't matter.

But at the same time, sowing and reaping doesn't mean that only what I do matters.

That we wouldn't become proud or that we wouldn't get somehow devastated by bad news, but we would instead not lose heart, but keep moving forward, knowing that you are a good and loving and gracious God.

And we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.