Welcome to Walk in the Truth podcast.
How do we know where to find answers to the toughest questions in life?
While the simplest answer is the Bible, where do we start this search and how do we discover
this truth?
Today, in this teaching podcast, John Metter, lead pastor of Cross City Church, takes a
specific text of the Bible and helps us find truth for the life we're searching for.
Well, good morning.
I'm so glad that you're here today on this Labor Day weekend and hope you're ready to
go this morning.
Please take your Bibles and turn to the book of Galatians again, Galatians chapter 6 today.
Over the last few weeks, we've been answering some pretty important questions, the who and
the what and the how of the Christian life.
We asked the question, who am I?
Who are we?
What is our identity?
We took some time to look in Romans chapter 14 that tells us that we're acceptable to
God through Jesus Christ.
We find approval of men in many cases when we walk according to his will.
It's not the priority, but the priority is to be accepted by God.
We asked the question of why.
Paul of Philippians says, for me to live as Christ and die as gain, that's why I'm on
the planet.
That's why I have time ahead of me because I'm going to live for Christ.
Last week, we were in Galatians chapter 2 verse 20, one of the great verses where Paul
said, I have been crucified with Christ.
So then there's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
In the life that I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved
me and who gave himself up for me.
That answers the how of the Christian life.
So I want to ask a different question today and kind of pull it all together.
That question is, what should this life look like?
If I'm living the Christ life, if I'm living the life that I'm supposed to be living day
in and day out, if I'm living the real life that Jesus promises us, then what's it going
to look like to other people?
What's it going to look like in my day to day?
And of course, I can't answer that completely today, but I can begin to step into that for
just a few moments.
So Galatians chapter 6, I'm going to ask that you stand with me as I read verse 7 through
verse 10.
Galatians is a pretty tough book.
I'll refer to that in just a few moments.
But in the middle of this toughness where Paul is riding to a troubled church in Galatia,
he's got these incredible passages of scripture like Galatians chapter 2 verse 20 and here
in Galatians chapter 6.
And in Galatians chapter 6, you have an amazing prescription for how we should live this life.
So here's what he says in verse 7.
He says, do not be deceived for God is not mocked.
For whatever a man sows, this he will also reap.
For the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption, but the one
who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life.
Give us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we will reap if we do not grow
weary.
So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people and especially those
who are of the household of faith.
Interesting passage here.
It has some warnings in it.
It has some prescriptions in it.
It gives us an understanding of how should we live this life.
Let's bow together.
Father, we ask that you illuminate this text by the power of your Holy Spirit.
Father I pray that we will grasp what Paul was saying to the church at Galatia, what
he's saying to us as believers today.
And Father, even more so because of those things I've just asked, I also ask you to
make it extremely personal to each one of us.
That we would examine our hearts, our minds, our words, our actions in light of this text
and in light of living for you.
I ask this in Jesus' mighty name we pray and everybody said amen.
Please be seated if you would.
I want to try to sum up the last three weeks in one sentence as I share those verses with
you.
Here's a statement I wrote together, put together to help me grasp those last three weeks, the
how, the why, the what of the Christian life and here's what I have to come up with.
This statement says it, I think says it in a great way accurately.
Accepted by God through Jesus, my life is not my own and he has promised to live through
me as I place my faith in him daily.
You're accepted by God through Jesus Christ as a believer.
We're saying about that just a few moments ago.
We looked at that in Romans chapter 14.
If you've come to faith in Jesus then you are forgiven by God, accepted by God, justified
before God, you're made righteous by the righteousness of Jesus Christ and so I think it's literally
and accurately possible to say I am accepted by God through the blood of Jesus Christ.
But beyond that it's not just being in that position where I'm accepted by God.
We also have to take the step of saying my life is not my own.
It doesn't belong to me anymore because Christ is going to live in me and he has promised
to live through me as I place my faith in him daily.
That's the basis for asking the fourth question that I'm going to ask today and that is what
does this life look like?
What should this life look like?
What do I do and how do I express myself in a world in which I've placed because of the
things we've already talked about?
Now let's look at the background for just a few moments in the book of Galatians.
I just want to kind of give you some background about this book or this letter itself.
First of all it's a tough letter as I said a moment ago.
Paul is writing to the church of Galatia and they're having all kinds of problems and in
this letter he writes things like I'm astounded that you are so quickly deserting the gospel
that I sent to you.
He even uses the phrase falling from grace which is not about losing your salvation but
it's about falling from that high calling of receiving salvation by the grace of Jesus
Christ.
He rebukes Peter in this book for showing partiality and he rebukes him for tolerating
false teachers so it's a tough book.
It's a tough letter.
He's saying to the church you've got a lot of messed up things in your life and yet I'm
going to share with you some incredible diamonds and gems of spiritual truth.
Galatians 2.20, Galatians chapter 6.
It's a tough book.
The other thing I want you to know about this book and this passage in particular is the
use of time.
Paul uses time in an unusual way but also a very helpful way for us.
There are two types of time mentioned in the Bible.
One is chronos which is measurable time.
It's the minutes and the hours and the days that we have in our normal life.
It's measurable.
But Kairos time is not that.
It's different.
My friend Spiros Zodiades says there's no English equivalent to Kairos.
He often said that to me.
Of course he was Greek and I was not.
So he would say there's no English equivalent for it.
You can't ever understand it fully which was kind of frustrating.
I said explain it to me please.
So he would say this about this word Kairos.
He said it really means divine opportunity or opportune time.
It has to do with a season which you recognize God has called you to something and you're
responding in that way and with that response is an opportunity to do what God's called
you to do in life, to fulfill your purpose in life and a variety of the things that we
will look at in just a few moments.
Jesus used Kairos when he said my time is not yet here but your time is always opportune.
When Peter preached at Pentecost he used Kairos.
He says therefore repent and return so that your sins will be washed away in order that
times of refreshing might come from the presence of the Lord.
I mean it's amazing how it's used in such a precise time.
It can be an ordained time or it can be a conditional time where God says if you do
this then I will promise to usher in something else in your life and that's how he says
it in the book of Galatians and in chapter 6.
Kairos reminds us of how we should consistently live even in trying and challenging and difficult
and disappointing times.
It addresses things when life is not going well, when it's messed up around you and you're
in an unjust world.
It addresses how you live when you're disappointed in people around you in the church or even
in God and how he has or has not interacted into your life.
It's a reminder that there's a time and an opportunity to serve God in amazing ways and
in spite of the bad stuff going on in the world around you, you have still an opportunity
to rise up and live life with full purpose.
That's what this is all about.
It's a warning not to just give in to your natural tendencies.
I have to tell you today that one of the greatest failures we have in the Christian life is
to give in to our natural feelings, our natural tendencies, our natural responses to when
things don't go well.
Hey, when things are going great everybody's happy, right?
Everybody's happy.
When they're not going well, when they're not going according to your plans and sometimes
we get pretty disappointed and we demonstrate a pretty disappointing kind of response to
the circumstances that we're in.
So as Paul dives into this, there are three things that I'm gonna point out in an important
way.
Let's break the text open and look at these three things.
First of all, a serious warning.
That's where this begins in verse seven.
He begins just sexy by saying, do not be deceived.
That's pretty serious.
It's really emphatic.
Do not be deceived.
God is not mocked.
You'll never mock him.
You'll never be able to do that.
So don't be deceived and think you can get by.
He says, for whatever a man sows, so also will he reap.
Let me read it again.
Don't be deceived.
God is not mocked.
For whatever a man sows, so also will he reap.
So Paul uses a phrase that everybody would understand in that era, and that is a planting
season, expecting a certain kind of harvest from what we plant.
And most of us know that you plant in an early season and you reap in a late time or a late
season.
That word season, the word time is often kairos.
And so he uses this word to describe actually the planting season of a gardener or a farmer.
Now gardeners know all about this.
I don't know much about it because I'm not a gardener, but gardeners know about this.
There's a certain time that farmers' almanac is your Bible, right, when it comes to when
to plant seeds and when to harvest them.
And some of these practices, how many gardeners are in the room?
Would you raise your hand for your gardener?
Okay.
There's three of you that garden regularly.
I'm thankful for you because apart from you, we don't get to eat anything at all, right?
There's a street not far from my home and they have a corn maze in the fall.
And they wipe that field clean before the spring arrives and they plant the seeds in
the spring.
And I'm absolutely certain that when I drive by that street in the fall, that corn is going
to come up.
It's going to be seven feet tall, maybe eight feet tall.
And it happens every single season.
They're sowing and they're reaping.
As a man sows, so also shall he reap.
So we understand the principle.
And Paul is using that principle to write to the church at Galatia.
But he doesn't just give them a general principle, but he gives them a way of life.
Let me explain the laws of the harvest that are very important.
And you find them in this text.
In life, we reap what we sow.
We reap more than we sow.
We will reap later than we sow.
In life, we will reap what we sow.
Whatever kind of seeds you put in the ground, that's what you're going to get from them.
You're going to get more than what you planted then.
And you're going to get it later down the road.
Not immediate, but later.
Now that all sounds perfectly natural, just an agricultural illustration until the Holy
Spirit helps us understand there's a positive harvest and there's a negative harvest in
your life that corresponds to the planting of seeds.
Paul gets very serious and intentionally personal in this text.
You see it in the field, he's saying, but it's also true of your life.
Let's go back to what he says in verse 6 and then in verse 7 and 8.
In verse 8 he says, for the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption,
but the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
Just a personal emphasis in verse 7 and 8, whatever a man sows, so also will he reap.
And the one who sows to the flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but to the Spirit
shall from the Spirit reap eternal life.
Take this personal.
If you're the church gathered around in a gathering and someone unrolls the scroll that
Paul has written on with his own hand to this church at Galatia, and you hear these words,
you have to take it personal.
You know, sometimes today in our world we take everything corporate.
We want anything we do, we want anything that happens in a community way or a national way
to all happen the way we want it and we don't even take responsibility for our own personal
lives.
And here's what Paul is saying here, he's saying this is intensely personal.
And here's the truth of it, the harvest you can expect in life is directly tied to the
seeds you've sown.
That will be an invariable result, an invariable outcome of your life.
Whatever a man sows, so also shall he reap.
If you're reaping bad things in life, let me tell you who sowed those seeds, it wasn't
somebody else.
So Paul gives us this personal truth for us to apply not only to our personal life and
our spiritual life, but our relational life.
Now I'm not saying that sometimes bad things happen to innocent people, I'm not saying
that.
But I'm saying generally speaking, and Paul is saying generally speaking, those seeds
you sow are going to come back and you're going to have a harvest of one kind or another.
And you can see that in your past and most importantly you can see it in your future.
So Paul warns them about their past, we're going to talk about that in a moment, and
he urges them to change the future by the seeds that they are sowing.
Now let's get into the why's he's saying that.
Why is he saying that?
Let's get real specific about what kind of seeds he's talking about.
For that we need to go to Galatians chapter 5.
So just turn back one page to Galatians chapter 5, and I want to begin reading in verse 19.
I want you to hold your Bible open to Galatians 5 and verse 19.
I'll give you a second to find it.
One page over, it shouldn't take anybody a really long time to find it.
One page over to the left, not to the right, and here we are Galatians chapter 5 verse
19.
Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry,
sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, the outburst of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions,
envyings, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these of which I have forewarned you,
this is I have forewarned you before, that those who practice such things will not inherit
the kingdom of God.
So Paul is naming these things and he says the people that practice these day in and
day out, they're not believers.
But he's writing a letter to the church.
As some of you are kind of living this life, sowing these kinds of seeds even upon professing
faith in Jesus.
He's warning them as you sow, so you also reap.
Think of verse 22, but the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law.
Now those who belong to Jesus Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and
desires.
Remember what Paul said in Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ, it's no
longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
I've crucified those old things in my life.
If we live by the Spirit, he says in verse 25, let us also walk by the Spirit, let us
not become boastful, challenging one another, envying one another, and from there he jumps
into chapter 6 where he calls these seeds.
Seeds you're sowing.
Keep that open just a few minutes.
The deeds and the practices are literally the seeds of bad or good and there's a harvest
coming for you.
What are you sowing in your life?
If you're reading Galatians chapter 5 and you look at that list as it pertains to your
life, what are you sowing?
What kind of seeds are you throwing in the field of your life?
That's an important question.
And the reason it's such an important question is whatever those seeds look like, that's
your harvest.
It's going to come.
As sure as the corn comes up in the fall when it's planted in the spring, so are those things
going to come up in your life in some way.
Don't be misled.
Don't think that you can mock God by saying that you can escape the consequences of sowing
bad seed.
You can't escape those consequences.
What you have to do is you have to uproot those things and sow good seed in your life.
This is the law of the harvest that we have from Paul under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit.
There will be consequences.
There will be payday someday.
What kind of consequence and what kind of payday do you want?
As a man sows, so also shall he reap.
It's pretty serious.
I talked a little bit about my cancer diagnosis a couple of weeks ago.
And as I was reading this, I thought, yeah, that doctor got really serious with me when
he said, you have cancer.
And of course, the next thing he said is, it's got to come out.
You're going to have to have surgery.
It's got to come out.
Let me translate that to what Paul is saying spiritually.
You've got cancer in your life from the seeds that you've been sowing.
They've got to come out.
You've got to find the place where you can say, I don't want that kind of harvest, so
therefore, I'm not going to plant those kinds of seeds anymore.
And you've got to be able to say, Lord, I want you to take control of my harvest by
taking control of my life.
That's where you want to be.
All right.
Look, this is not a negative passage.
It's very positive.
We take it negative because we feel the sting of saying, okay, he who sow seeds of the flesh
shall from the flesh reap corruption.
But the other part of that is, he that sow seeds of the Spirit will reap from the Spirit
eternal life, that great life we're talking about that we're supposed to be living that
God calls us to live.
Christ followers who are reading this passage should rush to their knees in repentance and
say, Lord, I want this stuff out of my life so I can plant the good seed in the soil of
my heart.
They should rush to prayer, not hold it off.
Don't hold it off.
So what do you see in your life when you read Galatians chapter five, verses 19 through
21?
Remove the cancer.
We have a great physician, the great surgeon, right?
Jesus who can do precise surgery on our hearts and our minds and our lives.
And then we have Paul's example.
I have been crucified with Christ.
No longer is it I who live, but Christ who lives in me.
On the other hand, sowing to the Spirit is many more times glorious than what we can
imagine.
I mean, that's pretty bad stuff.
We sow to the flesh all kinds of corruption, all kinds of decay is going to be the harvest.
But look on the other side of that.
If you sow to the Spirit, all kinds of amazing harvest can take place because you've sown
spiritual seeds and I promise you, you will reap spiritual harvest.
So we're going back to Galatians five again and being reminded of the good side of that.
That the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness
and faithfulness and gentleness and self-control against such things.
There is no law.
That's what you want in your life.
That's what you want to be sowing and that's what you want to be reaping and that's the
promise that you have in this passage.
So a serious warning.
Watch what you sow.
And then the text gives us a conditional promise and I love this promise.
That's verse nine.
Let us not lose heart in doing good for in due time we will reap if we do not grow weary.
I'm going to read it again.
Let us not lose heart in doing good.
This is what this life ought to look like.
We're Christ followers doing good the way he did good.
Not to earn our salvation but doing good because we've been saved by Christ and because we
follow Christ and because we've been crucified with Christ and so we no longer live on our
own but by his power.
So that text tells us that we need to not lose heart in doing good for in due time.
That's that chorus word in opportune time we will reap when we don't grow weary.
One commentary that was written almost a hundred years ago, a hundred years ago said this.
Having begun well in the life of the spirit they were in danger of losing their first
love being diverted from witness and service into petty bickering and greedy self-concern.
To these fatigued and spiritually exhausted Christians Paul made his appeal.
Let us not become weary in doing good.
You know sometimes we just get worn out by life and sometimes we get worn out by other
people.
It's okay to say amen to that by the way.
Is there anybody that says you know there are other people in my life that sometimes
wear me out.
Would you raise your hand if you want to honestly say other people wear me out?
And it might be the person next to you that raised their hand just thinking that you wear
them out.
Just saying, y'all can talk about it later.
They were worn out.
They were so worn out.
And I see here a church that's tired of hypocrisy and tired of sin and tired of failing and
temptation and tired of false teaching, tired of all the things that Paul mentioned.
But here is a promise of a time-based harvest.
He said if you're selling seeds of the Spirit you will at some future time reap incredible
eternal benefits.
Don't get tired of living the Christian life.
Don't get tired of living in the Christian community.
At some point in the future you'll have all kinds of harvest.
You may not be able to predict that time but at some due moment all the harvest will come
in.
Aren't you glad that we have a faithful God who will give us a harvest someday?
I'm happy about that.
I am really happy about that.
But the promise is conditional.
It's conditional.
We will reap what we sow more than what we sow later than what we sow if we don't stop
sowing.
You know when I plant a garden I should say when you plant a garden you know the harvest
is coming, right?
It comes with predictability.
Plant in the spring, you get it in the fall.
But in the spiritual realm it's not predictable.
I don't know when the seeds that Paul is talking about are going to bear fruit but I just know
that they will.
It may be a quick harvest.
It may be a delayed harvest but the point is that God will use that opportune time to
bring it out, the kairos moment.
He'll bring it out at the right time.
Did you maybe know of the missionary William Carey who labored for seven years in Pagan
India?
He had no witness for Christ almost at all.
William Carey went for seven years he preached the gospel before he got his first convert.
And after he saw his first convert heaven opened up and many, many people came to Christ.
Can you imagine laboring seven years and believing the laws of the harvest as you sow so also
shall you reap and not seeing anything at all and just having to hang on and wait for
the Lord to bring about his promise?
And I'm glad William Carey didn't give up.
I've been in ministry 40 years and I can tell you I've expected a spiritual harvest often
but I never can predict when.
I never know when God's going to bless.
I never know when God's going to honor a word that's shared or gospel witness that's given.
I never know when God is going to do that but I can tell you God calls me to serve by
faith even though I don't know when the harvest is and he's called you to live by faith and
serve by faith even when you don't know when the harvest is and even if you don't see any
harvest for one season or another season or another season just know it's coming someday
you just don't know when.
You reap the life he's called you to live by sowing the seeds of the spirit.
Serve in faith.
And I have to be the first to tell you those who serve in ministry in any way can get worn
out and many of you do this.
You serve in ministry.
Don't grow weary is what the the the admonition is.
Don't grow weary in doing well for in due time you shall reap.
Don't grow weary in your prayer that you offer up to God.
Don't grow weary in your witness.
Don't go weary in your study.
Don't grow weary in your teaching and your integrity or your honesty or your purity or
your ministry.
Don't grow weary.
Don't give up for in due time you will reap if you don't quit and leave the harvest behind.
And then Paul dives into a consistent focus.
So there's a warning there's a promise and this focus it's in verse 10 and repeats himself
here as well.
He says so then while we have opportunity let us do good to all people and especially
to those who are of the household of faith.
That's the command we have here.
Don't don't give up don't grow weary in doing good and then so then while we have opportune
time caras let us do good to all people and especially those who are of the household
of faith.
So what does it mean to do good again it's not doing good in order to earn your salvation.
You could never do enough good to earn your salvation but when you do good to reflect
the grace of God that's been given to you that's what he's talking about.
Doing good means good character as opposed to bad.
It means not the deeds of the flesh but the things of the spirit the fruit of the spirit.
It means integrity.
It means uprightness being fair and just with everyone having an excellent attitude and
a kind disposition.
It doesn't mean being a doormat to society but it means we reflect the goodness of God
to people because we have received the goodness of God from him.
It means live in such a way that reflects the forgiveness we've been given the grace
we've been given the love we've been given all the things that God has given us.
We reflect that because we've been crucified with Christ it's no longer us who live but
Christ who lives in us and those are the things that constitute the do good in this passage.
It means the opposite of the deeds of the flesh and it means total alignment with the
fruit of the spirit love joy peace patience kindness self-control and so forth.
Do those qualities by the way remind you of anyone in particular?
They should remind you of Jesus of Jesus.
The fruit of the spirit is none other than the fruit of the spirit of God inside of us.
The fruit of Jesus inside of us.
So Paul is saying this while you have opportunity to do good do it God is showing his goodness
through you.
As you know to a world that really is not listening to God is not reading their Bible
not looking for truth that may be the only part of the goodness of God they ever see
is your attitude your perspective your integrity your purity your kindness your fruit of the
spirit maybe the only witness they ever get is for you to be living a life like that.
Now I was doing a word study on these doing good phrases and I realized there were some
remarkable statements about doing good in the scripture.
In Acts chapter 10 verse 38 we read this you know of Jesus of Nazareth how God anointed
him with the Holy Spirit and with power and how he went about doing good and healing all
those who were oppressed of the devil for God was with him.
Jesus our leader went about doing good.
A man named Barnabas son of encouragement was mentioned in the book of Acts as well
in Acts 11 it says then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God he rejoiced and
began to encourage them with a resolute heart to remain true to the Lord for he was a good
man in other words a man who was doing good things and full of the Holy Spirit and of
faith.
And then there's that great passage in Ephesians 2 where we read about what our destination
is and it says in verse 10 for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for what
kind of works good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
Jesus did good Barnabas was called a good man because he did the good things that Jesus
had done and encouraged him to do as well and now we're called to good works.
This consistent focus tells us we are to do good in the name of Christ and it will bear
fruit.
You know how the early church practices this.
Let me read an account by one of the Roman rulers a couple of hundred years after Christ.
While the nation was breaking down health issues were taking place in Rome the Christians
stayed behind to minister.
Julian the apostate recognized the Christian practice of compassion was one that caused
the transformation of faith from a small movement on the edge of an empire to a cultural ascendancy
in other words Christianity became big because of these acts.
Riding to a pagan priest Julian the apostate said when it came about that the poor were
neglected by the pagan priests the Galileans the Christians devoted themselves to philanthropy.
They supported not only their own but ours as well and then he gave direction to the
pagan priest do what these Christians do they're living a life beyond what we live.
That's pretty important.
That's an outstanding witness because these Christians in the first century were doing
when everybody else was abandoning the poor and the hurting and the sick.
That's how they practice it.
Now there's a cultural side to this do good to all people that's what the text says.
Do good to everyone and when we hear that admonition it reminds us everyone every human
being is created in the image of God and only human beings are created in the image of God.
You may love your dog and your cat they're not created in the image of God but every
person is created in the image of God no matter how they live their life or where they're
going or what their thoughts are about the God that we worship they're still created
in the image of God and Paul says do good to all people.
Jesus said this when he was asked the question who is my neighbor and how am I supposed to
be living this love for God with all my heart soul and mind and loving my neighbor as myself
who is my neighbor and the answer to the question using the story of the good Samaritan.
Someone who didn't even live near the man who stopped to help.
Whoever can benefit from the goodness of God that's been poured into your life that to
you show the goodness of God too.
Another 100 year old commentary said this I'm saying this so nobody in the room will
think well he's he's woke he's talking about woke things I'm not.
It says when we forget this admonition we fall into the isms racism sexism tribalism
classism and other bigotries.
Let me just tell you we're in an election year today the season we're in there are strong
feelings everywhere would you agree with me there are strong feelings everywhere.
What an opportunity for Christians to live with kindness and integrity and not like angry
people who are mad at everybody else.
Do you think the passages that Paul writes about the fruit of the Spirit that he calls
us to is is only good for non-election years or should it be at all times?
It should be all times.
Listen I feel as strongly as anybody else in the room about the political possibilities
of the future but I also feel more strongly that it is no longer I who live but Christ
who lives in me.
You and I we need to understand that we need to live that way.
We are to do good and it will bear fruit.
There's a family side to this do good to all men especially to those who are of the household
of faith.
So now we're bringing it into the church as it should be.
You know I've noticed there's a tendency sometimes for us to be at our worst when we're
with those that are most familiar with us.
Have you ever noticed that?
We just kind of let down our guard.
Some people call that transparency and I would say well excuse me are you giving your worst
to the person that loves you the most?
You giving your worst to the person that you're supposed to be loving the most?
How about looking at the way Paul did?
None of that sin.
So sees it the spirit.
Find a way to rise above and give your best to the people that are in your spiritual family
or your personal family.
We're called to live this life everywhere.
Do good to all people as a witness for Jesus but do good especially for those that are
in the household of faith because they are with you in this pursuit of God's kingdom
and God's glory and because you're an example and because other people are looking at you,
they're watching you, they've got expectations about you and they should have good expectations
about you because you preach Christ and Him crucified and you practice the things of God.
Do good.
We are to do good and it will bear fruit.
If you're taking notes you know I've said that three times now.
We are to do good and it will bear fruit.
Let me wrap it up by saying this today.
If you were to ask me how should I pursue this kind of life, I've already prepared the
answers for that if you were to ask that question.
The three things I would say to you are these things.
First carefully evaluate the seeds you're selling.
Look at what you're selling.
Look at them like seeds that will lead to a harvest, not just like random acts or words
or thoughts or behaviors.
Say here's my field, the field of my life, the field of my heart, what am I selling there?
Carefully evaluate the seeds you're selling.
Secondly, anticipate your future harvest.
If this is true, if the Bible is true, whatever a man sows so also will he reap.
Whatever a woman sows so also will she reap.
It's intensely personal.
So what are you going to get in the future?
Looking back at what you've been sowing, what's your future like?
What are you going to reap?
Lastly, look for time and opportunity to sow good seeds around you.
Sow good seeds into those sitting next to you, those that live with you.
Sow good seeds into those that worship with you.
Sow good seeds into those that work with you.
Sow good seeds into those who are your neighbors.
Sow good seeds into the community in which you're a part of.
Sow good seeds.
In doing so, we recognize the harvest and we recognize what God wants to seek come out
of our lives day by day by day.
This is an undebatable harvest law.
You will sow seeds and you will reap what you sow, more than you sow, later than you
sow.
So sow good seeds and reap great harvest.
Just a moment, I'm going to lead some prayer and give you three invitations today as I
always do.
Number one, I invite you to stop by our decision stations.
I've said several times today because of the nature of the message I've said, doing good
does not allow us to get eternal life by our good works.
And I want you to know the way we get salvation is by a free gift from God through Jesus Christ
death on the cross.
His good work ensured that we would have opportunity to put our faith in Him and receive eternal
life.
If that's never happened to you, we want it to happen to you today.
You don't have to have a history of sowing good seeds or you don't have to have the promise
of sowing good seeds tomorrow, but what you have to need is knowing that you have a need
for forgiveness and eternal life.
And Jesus Christ will give you that eternal life if you come to Him in faith and repentance.
I want you to stop by our decision stations, talk to someone today.
That's the first invitation.
Second invitation is I would love for you to come by Guest Reception.
It's just a room outside the center exit doors and across the hallway.
I'll be there to visit you and get to know you.
I'd love to introduce myself to you and thank you for coming today.
Thirdly, I invite you to come back next week to our 120th anniversary.
I mean it's not every day we get to celebrate 120 years, right?
I mean it's kind of cool.
And we're focusing on the goodness of God, the umbrella over us, the goodness of God
over us for 120 years.
I promise you it'll be uplifting and inspiring and you'll see and hear all kinds of things
that we wouldn't normally be able to say.
So let's stand together as we close in prayer.
Father, I am very, very grateful for your Word and for the admonitions that you give
us day in and day out.
I pray today, Lord, that you will allow us to sow amazing seeds of the Spirit and reap
amazing harvest.
Father, you are an incredible God, amazing in your love and mercy and forgiveness to
us.
Help us, Lord, live that life that Paul called us to, not I, but Christ in me.
We ask this by your power, through your name, in Jesus' name.
Amen.