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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.
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.
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
verse 7. They sow into the wind and reap
the whirlwind. Luke chapter 6 verse 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
info@mylibertybaptist.org. 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.