Sowing and Reaping Is Real | March 1, 2026 PM

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The message you're about to hear was preached at Liberty Baptist

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message from God's Word will be a blessing to you.

Take a Samuel chapter #18 as we say goodbye to Absalom, as this

will be the final time that we see him in the Word of God, as

his coup is going to come to a failure and we're going to look

more at that. Here this evening.

Does read the book here in the process of reading a book by a

fairly famous Christian author and as I'm reading it written in

modern day. In fact, it was just released

not that long ago and as he. Was talking about a certain

element of the Christian life. He says what you need is a

mantra and that's what he said. He said what you need is a

mantra. And what was interesting about

that, it caught my attention because just taught on Buddhism

just a week before here in Sunday school, and that thought

of a. Mantra that we need to have and

I thought why are we using terms and thoughts from other

religions in our own? And I know what he meant.

He was talking about actually. Using scripture and being able

to recite it and to be able to have it constantly on the mind.

But there's a way we can talk about that without Co opting

terms that come from, you know, another religion.

Another one of those terms would be this karma.

Remember we talked about that last week in Sunday school?

Karma. What goes around comes around.

The poetic justice, you know, that that whole idea of karma,

that you do something good here and you might get something good

here later. You do something bad here and

it's going to come catch you later on.

That this is what's said. You know, oftentimes as

believers, if we're not careful, we can end up using some of

these terms to be able to talk about things that are actually

biblical principles. And as I mentioned last week in

Sunday school, karma in and of itself is not incorrect.

If you were to look at it in the proper biblical way, no, no, not

the way that the Buddhist would look at it, But if we were to

look at his proper biblical way, which is this, that which a man

soweth, that shall he also reap. And anytime there's something

true in the word of God, Satan has a cheap imitation copy that

he tries to peddle out there to the world.

And one of those is karma or poetic justice, or just what

goes around comes around, and it's kind of way to laugh off or

it's kind of a way to kind of shrug off the realities of

whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.

Well, tonight it's harvest time for Absalom.

He's been sowing seed for years and he's about to find out that

his time is up. And we'll look at Absalom's

life, we'll look at Absalom's death.

And we're just going to be reminded about some things that

I would believe that if I look around here this evening, we

probably already know. We're probably already pretty

aware when it comes this issue of sowing and reaping, but the

Bible has some graphic ways to remind us of things that we

ought to keep forefront of our mind and one of those is tonight

here this very issue of whatsoever a man soweth that

Shelley also reaped the title My message died is this sowing and

reaping is real. Sowing and reaping is real.

Will you stand please for the reading of God's word.

We're going to read a little bit of a larger.

Stretch of the Bible this evening, but follow along with

me if you will. Samuel chapter 18, verse one.

And it says, And David numbered the people that were with him,

and set captains of thousands and captains of hundreds over

them. And David set forth a third part

of the people under the hand of Joab, 3rd part under the hand of

Abishai the son of Zariah, Joab's brother, and a third part

under the hand of Itai the Gitai.

You remember him, We saw him a few weeks ago.

And the king said unto the people, I will surely go forth

with you also myself. But the people answered, Thou

shalt not go forth. For if we flee away, they will

not care for us, neither if half of us die will they care for us.

But now thou art worth 10,000 of us, therefore now is better thou

sucker us out of the city. And the king said unto them,

What seemeth you best I will do. And the king stood by the gate

side. And all the people came out by

hundreds and by thousands. And the king commanded Joab and

Abishai. And it Thai saying, Deal gently

for my sake with young man, even with Absalom.

And all the people heard when the king gave all the captain's

charge concerning Absalom. So the people went out into the

field against Israel, and the battle was in the wood of

Ephraim, where the people of Israel were slain before the

servants of David. And there were a great slaughter

that day of 20,000 men. For the battle was there

scattered over the face of all the country.

And the wood devoured more people that day than the sword

devoured. And Absalom met the servants of

David. And Absalom wrote upon a mule,

and the mule went under a thick bow of a great oak, and his head

got hold of the oak. You say, how on earth did this

guy get caught up in an oak? You'll remember he had

beautiful, luxurious hair, didn't he?

And that luxurious hair ended up being his downfall, and he was

taken up between the heaven and the earth, and the mule that was

under him went away, and a certain man saw it and told

Joab, and behold, said I'd saw Absalom hanged in a tree.

Now Joab only had to hear that twice.

That's that music to Joab's ears, despite what David had

just said a few moments ago. And Joab said unto the man and

told him, Behold, thou sawest him, why did thou not smite him

there to the ground? And I would have given thee 10

shekels of silver and a girdle. And the man said of the Joab,

though I should receive 1000 shekels of silver in my hand,

yet would I not put forth my hand against the King's son.

For in our hearing the king charged thee.

And ABBA shy, it's I saying, beware that none touch or touch

the young man Absalom, otherwise I should have wrought falsehood

against my own life, For there is no matter hid from the king.

And thou was that thyself would have set thyself against me.

Then Joab said, I may not tarry thus with thee.

He took three darts in his hand and thrust him through the heart

of Absalom, while he was yet alive in the midst of the oak.

Just well hang in there. And 10 young man that bare

Joab's armor compassed him about and smote Absalom and slew him.

And Joab blew the trumpet. And the people returned from

pursuing after Israel. For Joab held back the people,

and they took Absalom, cast him into a great pit in a wood, and

lay a very great heap of stones upon him.

And all Israel fled everyone to his tent.

Thus ends the life of Absalom in a very well and glorious way.

But as a fact of the matter, the harvest time has come for

Absalom. Look at what that means for him,

but also what that means for us as well.

Why don't you go ahead and be seated as we consider this issue

of sowing and reaping. Heavenly Father, be with us

tonight as we go through this message.

I pray that You help us all to be able to guard ourselves and

we're sowing the seed of righteousness and peace and not

sowing the seed which will bring a wild harvest later on in our

lives. Lord, thank you for what you've

done for us this evening and help us to beware and be wise

from what we see tonight. And we ask it in Jesus name,

Amen. The harvest has come, Absalom is

dead, A5 year saga is now over, and worst of all, it was totally

preventable. Everything that we have read was

absolutely, completely preventable if Absalom had

operated in a righteous manner. But instead he started by

seemingly acting in a righteous way, by trying to take justice

into his own hands. And there was some feelings

within him of righteous anger that he should have felt because

of how his half sister Tamar was treated.

But yet by taking justice into his own hands, murdering Amnon,

and then going down a road which led to nowhere but destruction,

not just to his own family, not just to the people of Israel,

but for Absalom, most importantly to his own soul.

This was all because he was in the place where he was sowing

wild oats and was going to receive a wild harvest when we

open up. Chapter #18 The time has come.

You know, we've had these people that were greeting David as he

was going out to the land of Gilead, as he was going out to

the eastern part of the Jordan River.

And we looked at most of those people.

One of those people we have not looked at yet in Mephibosheth,

but we'll be looking at him as he is going back towards David,

is rather going back towards Jerusalem later on.

But we've looked at all these people who have greeted David on

the way out, or at least a great deal of these people have

greeted David on the way out. And now it's time for the

battle. It's time for finally David and

Absalom to meet one another and it's to be handled on the

battlefield. And so David, being a wise

military general as he always has been, takes his troops and

divides them into thirds. He's going to try to outflank

Absalom. He takes Joe AB and he takes

Abbashi and then he takes his new friend Itai, the Getai.

Remember that man who came from Gath, that man who was exiled

from his own people. But he saw something righteous

within Dave and he said this I got to be a part of this.

He says, I'm going to protect you because I see something

right within you that I've not seen before and I want to stick

close to you. And now he's putting his own

neck on the line as he is now taking a third of David's troops

and he is going out to battle. And David has a desire to be

able to go out as well. I think because he's a righteous

man in so many ways, he, he doesn't want the people to

hazard themselves and for him to be a ease.

He also knows the last time that happened, it didn't go so well

for him spiritually, did it? In fact, that's kind of what got

this whole ball rolling in the 1st place with the sword in

David's house. And so David says I need to go

out there. But The thing is that David is

now aged. David is now older.

He is not the young man that he once was.

And they talk to David and they tell him basically this.

They don't want us, they want you.

They could kill 10,000 of us and it's no difference to them.

But what they really want is you, what we want you to do.

Stay back within the defense city.

Stay back away, let us go to the battle and you can sucker us.

Meaning this, that if one of those 3 divisions ended up

needing reinforcements, that David could bring those

reinforcements out to the men that were out there on the

battlefield. But in the meantime, David, you

just hang back. You let us go and do the work.

And this military parade takes place where all of them go by

and hundreds and all of them go by thousands.

And this is what takes place. And it's a beautiful scene, even

if it's a haunting scene, to know that they're going out to

the battle and many of them might be going out towards their

impending death. But then they go out into the

battle, which could be named the Battle of Ephraim Wood, because

they take place in this wooded area.

And there's some battles that have taken place over history

that in some ways are very similar to this.

The Battle of the Wilderness in the Civil War comes to mind,

where they were battling in such Bramble.

They were battling in such a deep, deep, thick forest that

you can't have normal military lines where you would just walk

in and March and hack with a sword or shoot with a gun as we

would later on in in history. That it's really almost

guerrilla type warfare where it's almost every man for

themself. And it's hard to be able to tell

who's on what side. And so they go into Ephraim Wood

and it's deep and it's dark and it's hard to be able to see

exactly what's going on. And we don't know what happened,

but here's what we do know. The results were that there were

20,000 men of Israel. Now when it talks about of

Israel in your mind, you have to understand that those are

Absalom's forces. Those are the ones that have

remained faithful to Absalom, not the forces of David.

So 10,000, or rather 20,000 of Absalom's forces, the people of

Israel die in that wood. And interestingly enough, it

says in verse #8 for the battle there was scattered over the

face of all the country, and the wood devoured more people that

day than the sword devoured. Now you say pastor.

What does that mean? And the answer is, I don't know.

Say, pastor, you shouldn't be a pastor.

If you get up in front of people and just say, I don't know.

Well, I'd rather tell you I don't know than lie about it.

Here's what it seems to me that by some miraculous means that

the wood themselves, whether they were pits or whether there

was pitfalls or whatever, it would have been there in the

woods that God supernaturally did such that it was as if the

woods themselves swallowed them up.

And it wasn't David's men who actually had to take the sword

to the men of Israel, but rather it was just the wood that took

care of it. And I could even put it this

way. This is God supernaturally

fighting for David on his behalf.

You say, master that that I don't, I don't get that.

I would say if you're going to stumble at that, there's a lot

more difficult things to understand in the Bible than

that. Like if you're worried about

that, I'll tell you. There's one time that they did

to dig ditches and all of a sudden there's water in them.

And then the way the sun bounced on it, the, the, the enemy

thought it was blood. They said, Oh no, there's blood,

let's go run. And that was it.

You say that don't make sense when God's in it, it makes

sense. So we don't need to go too deep

in this to try to say, well, you know, you know the woods, you

know, at certain times of the year, you know, there could be a

a certain types that no, don't don't worry about that.

All right, just trust God for his word.

How about that? You're a lot easier when you get

into the word of God, just taking the word of God for what

it is and then trying to explain it away.

Say, why are you pastor? Why are you mad at us?

I'm not mad at you, but I'm just telling you, I've read study

material that it even just this week they're trying to explain

what God has very clearly made a miracle here.

We don't need to explain it. We just trust God for what it

is. It's miraculous.

David is being protected by God because David is righteous.

It's almost like there's something about sowing and

reaping for righteousness on David's behalf.

Not because David's perfect. No.

In fact, we can look at David and see, yeah, there's some

areas where he's really not thinking right.

Maybe this area will be another area.

For instance, David's life. He's not thinking right as it.

I and Joab and ambush. I go out to battle.

He says hey guys, before you go. Just one thing, don't hurt my

son. Don't hurt, he calls him a young

man, Almost in a sense. Like, don't hurt my kid.

I'm thinking, David, have you not gotten it yet?

And here's where we'll take a brief time out.

And I just want to remind you spiritually, we all have blind

spots. Every single one of us have

areas where we think that we know things really well that we

don't know so well. You know when you go driving and

you're about to take that veer to the left or your veer to the

right, and all of a sudden you start and you hear someone lay

on the horn and go, wow, where'd they come from?

We've been there all along. But you didn't check your blind

spot. Do I have a driving instructor

who'd agree with? All right, there's.

OK, Good. That's it.

I see that hand. All right, good.

He was doing a gear shift there instead of raising his hand.

Amen. That's good.

We have spiritual blind spots. David's family is a spiritual

blind spot. Absalom deserve to die.

Absalom deserve to die many times over.

And by giving this unrighteous decree, in my opinion, because

he has a blind spot, he's end up putting a lot of people in a

very bad situation where Joab has to become the man of reason.

There's a problem when Joab is the man of reason.

But Joab says you. Want to leave this guy alive?

Do you want to be back here in six months?

Do you want to be back here in a year?

You're going to leave him there. You're going to leave him alive.

You're going to cut him down and put him in handcuffs.

Kill the man. He deserves to die.

And I'm not saying that Joab was righteous in the way he handled

it, but he was also in a very difficult situation because

David wasn't thinking about this correctly.

Would you have spiritual brown spots?

Can I help you with how to take care of those things?

Pray about them, recognize them. Don't jump.

Don't leap. Slow down, Ask the Lord to help

you. If you know that you're hasty

and making decisions, slow down. That's a spiritual blind spot.

If you know that you have problems and recognizing

spiritual issues in your family and not handling them, take heed

of that and talk to your family about those things.

If you know you have a spiritual blind spot when it comes to a

particular sin, stay away from it.

Get it out of your home. Don't even have a temptation of

it nearby. Whatever it is, don't allow that

spiritual blind spot to cause great problems for you.

Dave was a very righteous man in so many ways, but this is a

problem. Don't hurt my boy.

Don't hurt your boy. Your boy needs to die.

That's the righteous thing to take place here.

But the wood swallows up everybody.

And you'll remember that I said several chapters ago, chapter

#15 to be exact, that when we saw the beauty of Absalom's

hair, that that was nothing more than the word of God giving us

foreshadowing meaning this. Hey, mark this down.

Pay attention. This could come back.

Karma. No, not really.

That's what the world would say. How ridiculous is this?

Here's a man who has beautiful hair.

He loves his hair. It's obvious that he had some

great love for his hair because of the fact that even marked for

us in his in the Bible and because of what happens here.

He's going down through this wood in a mule and all of a

sudden he's hanging between heaven and earth.

And like I told you before, the old sermon goes the mule walked

on and he's hanging there. Hey, guys, hey, hey, guys.

I can't get down this beautiful. Fool.

Is hanging on a tree. And so someone does see him, and

the man of David's forces sees him and goes to Joab.

And Joab says, son, are you kidding me?

Why is why is he still alive? Why are you telling me this?

He says, well, don't you remember what David says?

It doesn't matter if you offer me two talents of silver and a

girdle, you know, by the way, the girl you know, you know,

just a, a piece of, of clothing there.

He says I don't, I don't care about that.

He says I got to listen to what the king says, and Joab says I

don't. And that was basically his modus

operandi, was it most of the time.

Hey, Dave, what do you want me to do?

I think I'll do this over here instead.

And so he says David's not thinking straight.

I'm going to save David from himself again.

Should he have disobeyed? Likely he should have listened

to the king. But he also was, I believe,

trying to act on behalf of the king, knowing that if Epsilon

wasn't taken care of, Absalom will do this again.

So he says the man has to die. And so he goes.

He takes 3 darts, strikes him right in the heart.

And then it says that Joab had 10 men and 10 men gathered

around, and those 10 men finished the job right there

treating him, And I'm not even trying to be funny about this,

but treating him like a human pinata as he's hanging there

defenseless. They beat him senseless and kill

him. And you look at the end of it.

You say, well, that's the end of Absalom.

A man who had so much, it ended up being so little.

In fact, do you remember verse #18?

We read it a few weeks ago, but I think it's good to read it

again. Because Absalom's life is summed

up this way. Now Absalom in his lifetime had

taken and reared up for himself a pillar which is in the King's

Dale. For he said, I have no son to

keep my name in remembrance. And he called the pillar after

his own name, and is called unto this.

Day Absalom's place. What was his legacy?

A piece of granite. What was his legacy?

A stone. A pillar of all that Absalom

could have been. And this was all that was left

of him. Well, what happened?

It's the fact that the law of sowing and reaping is real.

Let me be honest with you about something.

I, I got to tell you because as a pastor, you know, I talked

this morning a little bit about the joy of being able to get

into the Bible and joy of being able to study.

The Bible says study to show thyself.

Approved unto God, and that's for all of us.

But really Paul was telling that to young Timothy who was a

pastor. And so I'm to study, to show

myself Approved under God, a Workman that needeth not to be

ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

And so there are times that you get into a text like this and

you want to find something that people aren't expecting you to

come up with. I don't know if it's the pride

and the arrogance of a preacher to be able to say you're

expecting me to zig. And I'm going to zag you're.

Expecting me to go this direction with this application.

Well, I'm going to go something completely different so that

when you leave, you go, whoa, did you imagine?

Could you imagine what Pastor came up with?

I know you do that all the time. But yeah, we're supposed to

laugh at that. But anyway, no, but that.

But in the arrogance of a pastor, I could come up with

that. And I'll tell you, I went

everywhere from Psalm 37 to Romans chapter 1.

Romans 1 · chapter mention

And I, I'm going to all these different places in my study.

I have probably about two different pages of notes that

I've already typed out. And I just looked at it and I

stopped. And it was as if the Holy Spirit

was prompting me in the sense saying, you know, that's not

what this is about. We don't need to be clever here.

This is about one thing and one thing only, sowing and reaping.

And sure, it might be clever for me to take you on a Grand Tour

of all of these different places and trying to put them all

together. And if it's biblical, that's OK

Amen. As long as my heart is right and

being able to do it, not arrogant and pride trying to

show you how much I know. No, there's nothing good about

that in a pulpit. That's ugly in a pulpit, to be

honest with you, the heart of a pastor to be like that.

But even as a pastor, it could be the temptation of not even

sometimes of the arrogance as much just trying to say, well,

they're expecting me to go this way and I, I want to be able to

stretch their thinking maybe in a different way.

There could be a lot of different ways to look at it.

But sometimes the obvious application is the application

and the obvious applications that God said this man who loved

his hair got caught in his hair and died.

What more do you need to know? You know, the interesting thing

about is I started to study and I started to go back to the very

basics of the text. The more I got into the text,

the more I realized that the ironies of sowing and reaping

didn't just start and end with his hair.

Here's a few other things that I came up with as time went on.

Verse #14 says that Absalom was killed by Joab.

Well, why would Joab have had animosity toward Absalom?

Could it have been that when Joab was trying to be a friend

to Absalom and to David, Absalom says I'll burn your field down,

and he burned it down, and Joab was the one who killed him or

one of the hands that killed him, sowing and reaping.

Absalom died at the hand of Joab.

Absalom was a rebel against the king.

Well, what was Joab? A rebel against the king.

In fact, he rebelled against the very commandment that said don't

kill my son. And again, I'm not approving

what Joab did here because I believe that he was taking

matters and justice into his own hands, just as Absalom had

before. There was a way that Joab could

have done this that would have been righteous, that still would

have brought him to justice, but he was very glad to be able to

do it himself. The fact that he took the three

darts and put it in his heart tells you that he wanted to do

it at close quarters. It wasn't the fact that he

wanted to. Do it from far away.

He wanted Joab, or we wanted Absalom to know who it was who

killed him, and that alone ought to give us pause to think.

But at the same time, that spirit of rebellion against the

king that killed him is the very same spirit that Absalom and had

for the last five years. Whatsoever man soweth that shall

he also reap. Verse 15 says in 10 young men

the bare joabs armor can passed him about and smote Absalom and

killed him. I don't know, maybe you're

thinking I'm going too far with this, but how many women did

Absalom rape? Do you think God just randomly

put that number there of 10? Absalom took advantage of ten

women and raped them. Could we maybe even put it this

way, 10 younger women and ten young men said whatever Joab

didn't do, we're going to finish the job.

And very the very idea of Absalom being the judge, jury,

executioner of Amnon, This is what these men did to him.

They were his judge, jury and executioner.

It's not just about the hair. I mean, the hair is the obvious

part, but the laws of sowing and reaping are all over this text.

Now, there's one part that we have not looked at this evening

and that's this. What are the laws of sowing and

reaping? Maybe you're not sure what I'm

talking about. Maybe you think I'm just pulling

this phrase out of the air. It is a very biblical phrase,

and it is a very biblical thought for us to consider this

evening. So this is what I wants to do.

We can turn away from Second Samuel chapter #18 but I want

you to turn to Galatians chapter 6.

Galatians 6 · chapter mention

Will you do that now? Galatians chapter #6 And if this

is not marked in your Bible, mark it in your Bible.

Mark all of these verses in your Bible.

You say, pastor, I don't mark in my Bible.

Then put a post it note in there, put it on your phone,

whatever you need to do. However you track verses that

are instrumental to you and your Christian life, these need to be

marked in your Bible. And I would encourage you

marking your Bible. There's nothing wrong with it.

It's not sacrilegious. We're not talking about coloring

in it or doing something like that.

We're talking about taking a pen and going through and circling

or underlining or highlighting verses that are important to

you. So later on when you're reading

your Bible, they are there. They're front and center and you

can see them and I'm telling you.

You. Need to know these verses.

You need to be. Familiar with these verses?

If you are familiar with them, we need to be reacquainted with

them tonight because this is Absalom to AT so Galatians

chapter #6 look at verse #7 it says be not deceived.

Stop. The pastor, I want to read more

than that. You get 3 words.

Be not deceived. This is a warning to us that we

think that we are above this principle.

There's a warning right out the chute that we think that this

principle applies to other people all the time, but it does

not apply to us. I'm going to say this without

trying to be rude to you this evening, but I'm going to say

this to you just as plainly as I can.

You're not so special that you're the exceptions to God's

laws. You are not so special.

And just to make sure that you think if I am being rude, I'll

be rude to myself too, All right?

I am not so special that I'm the exception to God's laws.

Paul's warning us of this, Be not deceived.

Don't allow yourself to be deceived.

Pay attention to this because we think that we're above it or we

think that our cause is righteous enough that God won't

look at us upon this. But this is what the immutable

law is. Be not deceived.

God is not mocked. You are not going to make a

mockery of God and his laws. You know, God is undefeated.

He's never lost. God never has taken an L.

We take them on a regular basis. This pastor is is on a epic

losing streak. It would seem like sometimes

more than a winning streak. Why?

Because there's so many times I think that I can go against the

very things that God in his word is spelled out.

And sometimes I think that I'm going to get one over on him.

You say, Pastor, you really think about it that way?

No, I don't think about it that way.

In fact, I don't even process that mentally.

Maybe if I processed it mentally that I would come to a better

conclusion. But I just act in a way that is

not in accordance with God and don't be deceived.

God is not mocked for whatsoever man soweth that shall He also

reap. So verse 6 tells us that there

is a certainty. Listen to this number one, that

there's a certainty. Be not deceived.

God is not mocked for whatsoever.

What does whatsoever encompass whatsoever you say?

Well, what does it mean in the Greek whatsoever Whatsoever a

man soweth, that shall he also reap?

Now I'm not agricultural. In the sense that I take things

and grow them again, as a lifelong renter, that's not

really what you do. But I do know this, that if you

were trying to grow a garden, or if you're trying to grow

something in a harvest, that what you sow is what you reap.

This is just an immutable law of life.

Whatever seed you have is what grows.

That could be true in the plant Kingdom.

You plant Peppers, you don't get Peppers.

You plant tomatoes, You get tomatoes.

You plant beans or you get beans.

That's true in the animal world. Cats be get cats, dogs be get

dogs. Elephants be get elephants.

That's true with us as people, that people bigot people.

No one plants a pepper plant and says, I didn't know there were

going to be beans on this thing. If you see beans on your pepper

plant, then you got someone playing a trick on you because

that's not nature. Nature doesn't work like that.

In fact, if we plant corn, we would expect corn to grow.

In fact, no farmer is surprised. Say, hey, hey, man, what are you

standing there so perplexed about?

Well, I can't believe this. I got corn here.

Well, what? Why?

Why are you surprised There's corn?

Did you plant something else? No, I plant corn.

Well, what did you expect you get?

Well, I thought it was going to be something else, but I guess

it's just going to be corn. You'd say.

Man, that guy's got a screw loose.

But the certainty of whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also

reap is true in the spiritual realm as well.

You want to sow towards the things in life that are godly.

Then you will find that there will be blessings that come with

that. You sow in your life those

things that are ungodly. Look, we'll read this in a

minute. You're going to find that an

ungodly harvest will appear. That's the certainty.

But verse #7 tells us there's choices.

Not just a certainty, but the choices or verse #8 rather it it

says, for he that soweth to the flesh.

His flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.

We understand that we struggle with the flesh every single day.

You're not sure about that? Go read Romans 6 and seven and

eight, and when you're done, go back and read Romans 6 and seven

and eight, and keep doing it until you get it.

And then after a few weeks, you probably need to read it again,

because there's a lot of help there for us when it deals with

the flesh. This flesh has to be.

Mortified every single day, This flesh causes us so many

problems. People say, well the devil made

me do it way before the devil even wanted me to do something.

My flesh was OK with it. That's sometimes the devil gets

blamed for stuff that we want to do in our.

Flesh it says, if you want to sow to the flesh, then you will

reap corruption. You sow to the flesh, you will

receive a fleshly harvest, but he that soweth to the Spirit

shall of the Spirit reap life. Everlasting.

No, don't, don't get worried about that teaching work

salvation there. If you read the book of

Galatians you understand there is no work salvation.

But the idea is this is that there are Kingdom things that we

should be sowing to Jesus. Put it this way, lay not up for

yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt

and where thieves breakthrough and steal, but lay up for

yourselves treasures in heaven. This is what we are to do.

This is what we are looking at, That when you reap to the flesh,

you will reap A carnal harvest here in this world.

You reap to the spirit. You will see blessings in this

world, but you'll also see blessings in the life to come.

You sow the soul winning. Not only do you receive

blessings now by seeing someone saved.

That person will be with Christ for all eternity.

I would say that's something that lasts for all time, doesn't

it? You, you sow to righteousness

and you receive a crown from the Lord that you get to cast back

at his feet. This is something that lasts for

eternity. We understand that we're going

to go to heaven if we know Jesus Christ as our Savior, that

heaven can't get any sweeter, if you will, by what we do in this

life. But there is a judgment seat

that will come before and there's every tear.

The Bible says there's tears that have to be wiped away

before we go into heaven. Have you ever thought about why

people, people who are going into heaven after they pass,

could be crying before they go into heaven?

Could it be because at that judgement seat of Christ, we

realized? I wish I'd had a more spiritual

harvest because instead I've been sowing to wood, hay and

stubble and burned in the fire, but I should be sowing to gold

and silver and precious stones that are only made finer by the

fire. This is what we are to do.

This is what God has called us to do.

There's a choice that we have to make.

This isn't about karma. This isn't about payback.

No, this is about what we're doing for the Lord.

But there are some who are like Hosea said in Hosea chapter 8

Hosea 8:7

verse 7. They sow into the wind and reap

the whirlwind. Luke chapter 6 verse 45.

Luke 6:45

A good man out of the good treasure of his heart, bringing

forth that which is good. An evil man, out of the evil

treasure of his heart bring it forth that which is evil.

For of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaketh.

You ever get to this place? You go.

Why did I say that? You know why you said it?

Because you've been sowing seed in your heart that would make

that come out. Why do we curse?

Why would we take God's name in vain?

Well, it could be that for years you were sowing seeds of saying

whatever you thought whenever you wanted to, whoever you

wanted to, whether they wanted it or not.

And usually they didn't want it. And that made it even sweeter

when you said it when they didn't want it.

Let me, let me help you with something here.

Maybe you struggle a little bit with why.

Why is my speech still so bad? I've gotten saved.

It's still not what it ought to be.

Or or maybe you're even saying, well, I got away from the Lord

for a while. My speech isn't right.

Let's take the baseline here. A Christian ought to never take

God's name in vain. Period.

Can we all agree on that? OK, good.

A Christian ought not to curse. We ought not.

We ought to have speech that is helpful.

You say, why won't curse unless they no, hold on a second, hold

on partner. OK, here's the problem is that

often times we've been sowing seed for so long when we weren't

living right when we were saved or before we got saved.

It takes a while to get that harvest.

What's the principle of the harvest when you sow seed?

Does it just come up the next day sometime that harvest of

that seed, those weeds can pop up for years before you get

plucked down first of all, So what I'm telling you is when it

comes to the issue of speech and this is the only place, but that

verse does lend us to talk about this right of the abundance of

the heart, the mouth speaketh. I think it's important for us to

say that Christian speech ought to be impeccable.

It ought to be above anything that the world has.

But if it's not yet, understand, you got to plow over some of

those crops. You got to pluck out some of

those crops when they come up and don't get discouraged.

I shouldn't have said that. That's OK.

You know, we had people cursed at church before.

I had people cursed at church picnics before.

You know, you say, pastor, what? What do you do?

I said, get out of here. No, you know what we said?

Usually I don't have to say anything because it's amazing

when someone cusses in front of the pastor.

Most of the time they go, sorry pastor, I don't have to do

anything. The Holy Spirit does the work.

That's the case. I'm telling you, if you've had

some of that, it's time to let your heart change in those

things. Sow some new seed.

No, no, sow some new seed means speak and write.

By the way, you know you can curse without ever using

profanity. Let me say, Pastor, you, you've,

you're cracked up. But I think it's been a long day

for you, Pastor, Hasn't Job cursed the day he was born?

He didn't use profanity. What I'm saying is you can have

unhealthful words and never actually take a word that is

considered a curse word today. You're telling me that you can

you can lose your mind at somebody cutting you off and you

may not curse, you may not use profanity.

But did you wish? Good upon them or I'll OK point

accepted. Amen.

Point is we as believers are called to do better and starts

where sowing and reaping because it starts in the heart.

Here's where most Christians get it wrong and this is where

independent Baptists get it wrong so often we're not careful

that it's all about it can be about all performance based.

You got to look right. You got to act right.

You got to talk right. You got to smell right.

You got to do all those things. By the way, we prefer.

You smell, right. OK.

But anyway, I don't care how you get there, but I hope you smell

right. All right.

But the idea that I don't care how you get there, but the idea

is this. Start with the heart.

Because if you start here, all those other things work

themselves out out of the abundance of the heart.

The mouse be. I don't know where that came

from. Yeah, you do.

We're like computers in the sense that the computer, in

essence, is only supposed to do what it's programmed to do.

Input in is output. What do we have?

Input and output? Can I tell you why?

I'm very careful what I watch on TV because I don't want those

words that they used to come out of my mouth the next time I pop

off at somebody. He said, well, you're pastor,

you don't pop off somebody. I have in the church van before.

I'm not proud of it. I'm not up here but saying, I'm

saying I'm fleshly and you don't want to come out in that moment.

And I've already embarrassed myself and have made a mockery

of the Lord of whom I serve. You know what I don't want to

come out? A word that I'll never be

uttered by a believer. You say, well, you're above

that. Well, I wasn't when I was 16 or

17. Took me a while to get that out

of my system. And you're telling me you

couldn't come back? Oh, yeah, it could if I was

around it. Enough sowing and reaping is

real, and it's not just about cussing.

It's not just about using bad language.

It's about every area of life. Remember I said last week, be

careful what you do. Be careful what you hear that

that's not just for the kids, that's for all of us.

Pastor, I'll be fine. You think you're the exception.

Be not deceived. God is not mocked.

That's over. A man soweth that shall he also

reap. So there's the certainty,

there's the choices, but verse #8 verse #9 rather is the

consolation. See pastor, this just seems like

a lot. Don't be weary and well doing in

due season we shall reap if we faint not.

You know, every time you come to church, you're sowing good seed.

You're sowing good seed. You're here on the Word of God.

You're learning more about God. That's sowing good seed.

You know every morning when you wake up and you're so tired and

you got to grab that cup of coffee just so you can see

straight and you read your Bible before you go out on your work

day and you pray, You know what you're doing.

You're sowing good seed. You know what you're doing when

you're kind to somebody at the store instead of trying to cut

them off so you can get 30 seconds ahead of them in the

checkout line? You're sowing good seed.

You know what you do when you're right in the way?

You talk to someone else instead of just telling them how you

really feel on the inside. You're sowing good seed.

You know what happens over time? Well, in the short term, almost

nothing. Hey pastor, what do you say?

Well, when you sow, at first, not much happens.

But over time, you know what happened.

There's a certainty of the harvest.

You know what's interesting about a harvest that you.

Let's say you just grow 1 stalk of corn.

Let's say that's all you can do is you start with one stalk at

the first harvest. You know what you can do?

You can harvest more corn seed to be able to plant the next

year, and then from that you can harvest more seed to plant the

next year. In essence, you can have an

abundance of crops started from one seed if you're patient

enough and have the time. You know what?

The Christian life is patiently sowing to righteousness and over

time God will bless over and over again.

It's not just don't do the bad things, don't sow the bad things

because we're really good at independent Baptist preachers

don't do those bad things. And we ought to tell you not to

do the bad things. But it's not just don't do the

bad things, it's. Do the good things, sow to.

Righteousness, It is real. It's as certain as the sun going

up in the East and going down in the West.

It's just as certain as anything you could imagine.

And this is what we need to know tonight.

And remember tonight that the laws of reaping and sowing are

as real as any physical law of the universe.

Sowing and reaping is as real as gravity.

It's as real as inertia. It's as real as the laws of

entropy. Meaning things don't get better

and better, they get worse and worse over time.

That the laws of sowing and reaping are as real as anything

that God has set up in any other realm of the physical universe.

It is real. Fleshly choices lead to future

consequences. Fleshly choices lead to future

consequences. And my fear is that many

Christians spend six days a week sowing wild oats and then come

to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

I'm going to run that by one more time.

Many Christians so wild oats six days a week, and on day 7 they

come to church and they pray for a crop failure.

And Lord, don't let it happen. He says it's going to happen,

and because He loves you, He will bring it to pass.

Because He loves me. Yes, because He loves you.

He's going to show you that His Word is real so that when the

consequences come in His love and His benevolence, He wants

you to come back to Him. Why were things so bad in Israel

at the Divided Kingdom, that things were bad in Israel and

things were bad in Judah? Was it because God hated Israel

so much and God hated Judah so much?

No, He brought the consequences because He loved them, hoping

that someday they would wake up and say, wow, God told us if

we've served him, he would bless us.

And God told us if we didn't serve him, there would be

curses. He is right.

And He sent us these prophets to tell us this is what it's going

to be. God didn't hate him.

He. Loved him and God loves you

today. He loves you so much He won't

let you get away with your fleshliness.

He will for a little while. He does with me, but He loves

you far too much to let it keep going on.

Why? Fleshly choices lead to future

consequences. What comes in the heart will

eventually come out of the mouth.

What's in the heart? And she comes out in the hands

and the feet. It's not well, it could happen,

it's not well. That's true for everyone else

is. Be not deceived.

God is not mocked. Don't try to pull one over on

God. You will lose if fleshly choices

lead to future consequences. Thank you for listening to the

sermon from the pulpit of Liberty Baptist Church.

If this message was a blessing to you, or if there's any way we

can serve you, please let us know by contacting us at

[email protected]. Or you can visit us this Sunday

at 800 Washington St. in Easton, MA.

May the Lord bless you as you grow in His Word.