Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
State College, PA
A German friend of mine was travelling through Italy on a Sunday with a team of young people. They were members of a short-term mission group and had a long way to go that day, but they were low on gas, and every station they passed was closed. Things were looking pretty grim as the day went on; they had prayed for an opportunity to fill the tank, but nothing had turned up. They were close to giving up hope, looking for a place to camp for the night, when a Porsche pulled up alongside and waved them over. Bernd stopped and got out of the van to see what the other driver wanted, but before he could say anything the guy pulled a gas can out of his car and started pouring gas into the van. They didn’t exchange any words, and when he was finished emptying the can, he jumped back into his Porsche and drove off (ignoring Bernd’s offer of money to pay for the gas).
Bernd, who told me the story, is as unlikely as anyone I’ve ever known to exaggerate this kind of thing, so I have no doubt that what he told me is true. They cried out to God and He provided in a surprising and startling way. They had no idea who had given them the gas or why he had done it. But God had provided for them in this strange way. When we think about God as our provider, we usually have this sort of thing in mind, that God provides us with the things we need materially to get through our lives. And He does provide for us in this way, as Jesus says in Matthew 6:33: “But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” God provides all the things we need to get through our lives in this world, but these things are not at the center; it’s as we seek first God’s kingdom and His righteousness that He promises to provide everything else.
The passages we read this morning are focused on God’s provision for our spiritual well-being. The reading from Ezra tells about God’s people worshiping Him to celebrate their return from exile to the land of promise (6:19-22); in John 6, Jesus proclaims Himself as the bread of life who nourishes His people with his own body and blood (6:35-51); and in Acts we see Philip proclaiming the gospel, which leads those to receive it to be filled with joy, because they’ve been reconciled to God. In Psalm 30, which is the main focus of this sermon, we see that God provides what we most need to become the kind of people He’s called us to be and that at the very center of this is the joy that is rooted in an encounter with God Himself.
The first thing God provides is mercy (vv. 1-3). Notice the words “you spared me” (v. 3). God had kept him from experiencing what he deserved, protected him from the natural consequences of things he had done. This is what mercy is about, receiving something better than what we deserve.
The background of these words at the beginning of the psalm are in the middle section, vv. 6-9 (which we didn’t read together earlier in the service). “As for me, I said in my prosperity, ‘I shall never be moved.’” Everything was going well and he became presumptuous. He forgot that his security had come from God and God let him see the reality of his situation: “By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.” God withdrew from him, let him experience something of what life is like without His provision and he says he was dismayed. This led him to cry out to God for help: “To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication…. Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!’”
Things were going well in his life, but rather than giving thanks to God he started congratulating himself. “I’ve done pretty well. I’m not like some of the losers I know; I have a good job, I work hard, and I have a stable life.” What he forgot was that his ability to have a stable life was a gift from God, so God let him experience instability. Everything started going wrong, which reminded him of the truth and led him to come to his senses and cry out to God for mercy. The thing we so easily forget is that we are dependent on God’s mercy every day, every moment, of our lives. But when the psalmist remembers and cries out to God he finds that God is not anxious to punish him for his foolishness and presumption; what he experiences is a fresh realization of God’s mercy: “O Lord my God, I called to you for help and you healed me. O Lord, you brought me up from the grave; you spared me from going down into the pit.”
Of course, in our morally lax culture it’s easy to get the wrong idea about God’s mercy. We too easily think, “It’s not really such a big deal; God knows our weaknesses and forgives us anyway.” We sometimes picture God as an indulgent, grandfatherly figure sitting in heaven wringing his hands over our wrongdoing, wishing we’d straighten up but knowing it’s not going to happen. God, from this perspective, just decides to overlook our sins.
But that’s not how God shows us mercy. He shows us mercy by providing redemption, by providing a way for our sins to be forgiven (vv. 4-5). The psalmist doesn’t deny the reality of God’s anger over his sin. He says “his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping [as a consequence of God’s anger] may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” The background of God’s redemption is His anger over our sin and rebellion. If you’re ever in doubt about this, spend some time thinking about Jesus on the cross; when He took our sins upon Himself, the Father turned away from Him, leading Him to cry out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” God doesn’t wipe away our sins as if they didn’t matter; He wipes away our sins by calling His only Son to bear the penalty in our place.
God is displeased with our sins, but the wonderful truth announced in the gospel is that He has provided a way for us to escape the consequences of His displeasure. And the psalmist tells us that He comes to us as Redeemer without delay: “For his anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.” God, when He confronts us with our sinfulness, doesn’t expect us to wallow in self-reproach. He doesn’t call us to spend time engaging in the wrong sort of penance, going around condemning ourselves and trying to be miserable. Penance, by the way, as I’ve read in Catholic spiritual writers, is not about trying to earn God’s forgiveness (because this has already been freely given); it’s about correcting our bad habits, training ourselves to act differently than we’ve been doing. Penance is about training ourselves to bear the fruit of repentance, which we all should be doing whether we are Protestant or Roman Catholic. But in any case, God doesn’t want us to wallow in misery and self-pity when we come to a new realization of our sinfulness. He has provided for our redemption and His forgiveness comes to us immediately: “His anger lasts only a moment, but his favor lasts a lifetime; weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.”
This leads to the final point, in vv. 11-12: God provides us with joy. Redemption is not the end of the story. It’s not like a “get out of jail free” pass, where we receive Christ as our Redeemer, which gets us a ticket to heaven, and then get on with living our lives the way we want to. God is not just providing a way for us to get to heaven; He is providing what we most need to become the kind of people He has created us to be, and at the very center of this is joy that grows out of an encounter with God Himself.
But this joy is rooted in our poverty and need for mercy. This isn’t where the psalmist started out. He got into trouble because he forgot about his own spiritual poverty, so his happiness was superficial; it was based on his presumption that he would never be shaken. But then he got into trouble, which is what we, as sinful human beings, do best. So he cried out to God and was able to say “you turned my mourning into dancing.” When he turned to God in repentance, God didn’t say, “I’ll forgive you, but you need to be miserable for a while so you can learn to properly appreciate what you’ve received.” He’s already been miserable. He’s experienced his poverty of spirit, so at the moment when he cries out for help, God grants him the privilege of rejoicing. When he turns to God for help, he is then able to say “You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent.”
But we often get the wrong idea about joy. It’s something more, something different, from circumstantial happiness. We tend to feel happy when everything is going well; this is perfectly natural and is part of the way we were created. There’s nothing wrong with feeling happy when we experience good things in our lives. But joy is more than this.
I love the hymns of the 18th century English hymn writer Isaac Watts. One of his most-famous hymns is “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” He had a strong grasp of Scripture and a deep experience of Jesus Christ. He has a hymn that starts out, “Alas! and did my Savior bleed And did my Sov’reign die? Would He devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” The verses go on in wonder over what Christ did in laying down His life to redeem us. Unfortunately, someone in the late 19th century thought the hymn needed a more positive element and added this refrain: “At the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, and the burden of my heart rolled away; it was there by faith I received my sight and now I am happy all the day.” Is this true for you? Are you now “happy all the day” since you encountered Jesus Christ? The Old Testament book that is most-often quoted in the New Testament is the book of Psalms, and the lament is the largest category in the Psalter. Why is this so? Because we, as people living in a fallen world, often find ourselves in trouble, and the Psalter, as the prayer book of the Bible, reflects this reality. We often find ourselves in trouble and cry out to God for help. We’re not “happy all the day.” It’s more truthful to say that “You turned my wailing into dancing [but in the meantime, the wailing was real and heartfelt]; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.” Things go wrong; we get off track and lose sight of who we are and who God is. But then we turn to God and He shows us His mercy.
Frederick Buechner has a good description of the difference between happiness and joy: “We need to be reminded… that joy is not the same as happiness. Happiness is man-made—a happy home, a happy marriage, a happy relationship with our friends and within our jobs. We work for these things, and if we are careful and wise and lucky, we can usually achieve them. Happiness is one of the highest achievements of which we are capable, and when it is ours, we take credit for it, and properly so. But we never take credit for our moments of joy because we know that they are not man-made and that we are never really responsible for them. They come when they come…. Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstance, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes. Even nailed to a tree” (Listening to Your Life, p. 287).
William Cowper was a poet and hymn writer in 18th century. He was also a member of John Newton’s church (the former slave trader who wrote “Amazing Grace”). Cowper struggled with mental illness for much of his adult life and more than once tried to commit suicide. There were periods when he was fairly stable, but even during those times he was highly sensitive and anxious. During his periods of acute depression he became psychotic and had to be institutionalized. But he experienced God’s help and faithfulness again and again. He couldn’t sing “and now I am happy all the day.” From time to time he became overwhelmed by darkness and depression, but even then the Lord brought him through, and joy at times took him by surprise. (There’s a very good overview of his life in the book Genius, Grief and Grace, by Dr. Gaius Davies). Here’s a well-known stanza from one of Cowper’s poems:
Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings;
It is the Lord who rises
With healing in His wings;
When comforts are declining,
He grants the soul again
A season of clear shining,
To cheer it after rain.
That’s the kind of joy Buechner is talking about; it’s not something we bring about by our efforts to find a happy life. God comes to us “with healing in his wings” and takes us by surprise. He provides us with joy we didn’t expect, maybe even at a time when it doesn’t make sense to feel joyful.
God our Provider provides the things we need to get through our lives in this world. Most of the time He does this in ways that seem ordinary, in ways that might lead us to take credit for it ourselves. But sometimes, when we find ourselves in situations where we’re in over our heads and nothing we try is working, He provides in more extraordinary ways. But more fundamentally, He provides what we need to become the kind of people He’s created us to be. He provides mercy, because we are sinners who violate His law. He provides redemption, because our rebellion has inescapable consequences and can’t just be ignored as if nothing has happened. And He provides us with joy, because this is at the very center of who He has called us to be as people created in His image.
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Sowing and Reaping, Galatians 6:1-10
One of the things that puzzled me when I was a young Christian was the number of people I met who’d been believers for many years but had never grown to spiritual maturity. I don’t doubt that some of them were nominal Christians, people who were Christian in name only and never really understood the gospel of grace; they were only Christian in a cultural sense, and had never truly been reconciled to God. But many of these people were genuine believers who’d spent years floundering and had finally given up. They were bothered by their spiritual condition, but they didn’t know what to do about it. They’d followed too many dead ends in the past, things that were supposed to lift them to a higher level of spirituality; in the end, all these promises had proven to be empty. One of the ways to tell the difference between these people and a nominal Christian is that these true believers tend to be unhappy with their spiritual condition. If you’re not growing in Christ and are content with your situation, you have every reason to be concerned.
I’ve spoken to people who’ve tried various things along the way, hoping for an experience that will push them over the edge into a life of more vibrant spirituality. They’ve been told that they need to pray for the Holy Spirit and simply “take it by faith” that God has answered (since He’s promised to give the Spirit and we know He’s faithful to His word). So they’ve prayed for the Holy Spirit and given thanks for the gift in faith. But what are they supposed to do next? After awhile they start thinking that maybe something has gone wrong. Maybe their faith was deficient in some way, or maybe there had been too much doubt mixed in. So they’d try again and take it all by faith. But nothing ever happened. These prayers made no difference at all in their spiritual life. Some have heard that what they need is to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. So they’ve prayed and had others lay hands on them. Many of them have had uplifting experiences in this way, but they’ve continued to struggle with living out their Christian lives. Many of them have gone from one spiritual high to another, but there seems to be no connection between these spiritual highs and their relationships with others at home and in the workplace.
J.I. Packer tells about experiencing a period of intense frustration in his early Christian life. He desperately wanted to grow; he wanted to be closer to God, and he kept hearing teachers who promised that if he had the right experience it would all happen more-or-less automatically. So he sought these experiences and prayed intensely for them. But nothing happened, no matter how much he prayed and believed. Here’s what he says: “At that time I did not know that Harry Ironside, sometime pastor of Moody Memorial Church, Chicago, once drove himself into a full-scale mental breakdown through trying to get into the higher life as I was trying to get into it.... All I knew was that the expected experience was not coming. The technique was not working. Why not? Well, since the teaching declared that everything depends on consecration being total, the fault had to lie in me.... I became fairly frantic” (Introduction to The Mortification of Sin, by John Owen, pp. 10-11).
All these promises and techniques don’t tell people what they need to know. They need to know how to order their lives to grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ, and all the advice they receive tells them that if they find the right experience, they will begin to live the Christian life more-or-less automatically. All the formulas are saying pretty-much the same thing, that the key to a deeper Christian life is entering into the right experience. And it’s true that we do need to experience more of God. But our experiences of God take place within the context of discipleship, as we walk with God in the mundane realities that confront us each day. There is no experience that is going to produce the sort of automatic discipleship that so many promise. It’s not going to happen. Packer rightly concludes that “this higher life as described is a will-o’-the-wisp, an unreality that no one has ever laid hold of at all, and that those who testify to their experience in these terms really, if unwittingly, distort what has happened to them” (p. 10).
According to Paul, Christian discipleship is about sowing the right kinds of seeds. If we want to grow as Christians, our primary need is not a particular experience. What we need is direction in learning to develop godly habits which over time will bear fruit. Paul compares this to a farmer sowing a field. If a farmer neglects to sow anything at all, he will reap a harvest of weeds. If he sows wheat, he can’t expect to reap a harvest of corn (and if he does he will be sadly disappointed). Growing in godliness is very much like this: we will reap what we sow, and if we neglect to sow or if we sow the wrong sorts of things, we will be disappointed with the results.
Notice how he introduces this idea in verse 6: "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked." He is not content to simply state his idea; he arrests our attention first with this strong warning. "Do not be deceived." He's concerned that this is an area where we are likely to be deceived, so he begins by warning us. And many are deceived about this. Our natural tendency is to be careless and to give little thought to the kinds of seeds we're sowing. Or we consistently sow one kind of seed and expect to harvest something better. It is easy to begin thinking that because God is merciful and forgiving, as Paul has been stressing throughout this letter, we don't have to worry about the consequences of our actions. We are saved by grace, so it's really not such a big deal if we indulge in little sins. It's easy to begin thinking that God's forgiveness frees us from concern about the natural consequences of our actions. It's tempting to develop the mentality that we can "get away with it," because God is merciful and forgiving. Paul reminds us that we are deceiving ourselves, and that we will, inevitably, reap what we sow.
Then he adds to this: "God cannot be mocked." Mocking God here is not ridiculing or making light of Him, but seeking to outwit Him by evading His laws. We try to mock God when we show reverence for Him in our words, but live in total disregard for Him, when our way of life is an implicit rejection of the Lordship of the Spirit. We seek to mock God when our conduct in private contradicts our public profession of allegiance to Christ. Some of the translations read: "God is not mocked." This is a more literal translation, but it means the same thing. Paul's point is that we will not be successful in our attempts to mock God. Ananias and Sapphira, in Acts 5, tried to mock God. They sold some land, and pretended to be giving the whole sum to the church when, in fact, they had kept back part of it for themselves. They were free to keep all or part of the money; the problem was that they tried to "fake it." They pretended to be something they were not. In most cases, the consequences are not so immediate. It may even seem, for a while, that we are succeeding. But in the end we will reap what we have been sowing. If we’re trying to mock God, Paul tells us, we cannot possibly succeed.
So, if we want to grow in godliness, we need to be concerned with the kind of seeds we're sowing. Paul applies this principle in two areas in the following verses. In verse 8, he applies it to our personal growth in holiness, and in verses 9-10 he applies it in the area of good works (we’ll also consider verses 1-5 in connection with these verses).
Paul points to two possibilities in the area of personal holiness: either we are sowing to the flesh or to the Spirit. Remember what we saw in the last passage: The flesh, or sinful nature, as it reads in the NIV, refers to the whole person in rebellion against God. Living in the flesh is living within the limited perspective of a world that is alienated from the life of God. “The man whose horizon is limited by the flesh is by that very fact opposed to God.... The flesh in this sense denotes the whole personality of man as organized in the wrong direction, as directed to earthly pursuits rather than the service of God” (New Bible Dictionary, p. 371). When we’re living according to the flesh, we are at the center, and everything revolves around our own desires. Living by the Spirit is living under God’s lordship, with Him at the center of our lives, and living by the flesh is living for ourselves.
John Stott was the pastor of a large Anglican church in London for many years and has had a very wide impact through his books. Martyn Lloyd-Jones also had a long pastorate in London, and the two men were personal friends. But they had major disagreements about how evangelical Christians should relate to their denominations, and because they were both very influential leaders their disagreement was widely known. And, of course, people tended to assume that these men saw each other as rivals. Lloyd-Jones died in 1981, and Stott tells about visiting him near the end of his life: “On arrival, he could not have been more affable and welcoming.... I told him that I had 2 main reasons for asking to call on him. First, because I had a strong admiration and affection for him... and was sorry we saw so little of one another. Secondly, in my travels people ask me how he is, and I have to say that I have not seen him lately. Worse, people say they have heard we are not on speaking terms with one another. ‘Oh I know, it is absurd. People are very mischievous. They can’t distinguish between principles and personalities” (David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981, by Iain H Murray, p. 768). They had major disagreements, but they were able to recognize and love one another as brethren in the Lord. The normal thing would have been to treat one another as rivals. But both men had spent many years sowing to the Spirit, and they didn’t respond to each other according to the world’s pattern. They weren’t at odds with each other.
Here’s what Stott says about this passage: "This is a vitally important and much neglected principle of holiness. We are not the helpless victims of our nature, temperament and environment. On the contrary, what we become depends largely on how we behave; our character is shaped by our conduct.... To `sow to the flesh' is to pander to it, to cosset, cuddle and stroke it, instead of crucifying it. The seeds we sow are largely thoughts and deeds. Every time we allow our mind to harbour a grudge, nurse a grievance, entertain an impure fantasy, or wallow in self-pity, we are sowing to the flesh. Every time we linger in bad company whose insidious influence we know we cannot resist, every time we lie in bed when we ought to be up and praying, every time we read pornographic literature, every time we take a risk which strains our self-control, we are sowing, sowing, sowing to the flesh. Some Christians sow to the flesh every day and wonder why they do not reap holiness. Holiness is a harvest; whether we reap it or not depends almost entirely on what and where we sow" (Only One Way: The Message of Galatians, pp. 169-70).
I think we often go wrong in this area by simply asking the wrong sorts of questions. We want to know just what is permissible for a Christian; how much can we get away with? We approach it as a legal question. "Am I breaking any law, or will I come under God's judgment for doing this?" Instead, we need to ask, "what sorts of seeds am I sowing?" "If I continue regularly in this activity for the next 10 or 20 years, what sort of person will I become?" "Am I sowing to the flesh or to the Spirit?" "Is this activity moving me in the direction I want my life to go?" If we are sowing to the flesh, we will reap corruption, that is, we will experience a process of increasing moral and spiritual decay. If we are sowing to the Spirit, we will reap eternal life, that is, we will experience a growing fellowship with God. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
But Christian discipleship is not only a matter of personal holiness. Paul turns next to our work of serving others in the name of Christ, and urges us to not grow weary in well-doing. It’s easy to become discouraged; we’re often tempted to give up. “What’s the point of it all?” we sometimes wonder. Paul was aware of this danger. He had seen it happen to others. John Mark, for example, the author of the Gospel of Mark, worked on Paul's missionary team for a while, but then, according to Acts 13:13 he "left them to return to Jerusalem." We live and work in a fallen world; faithfulness to God exposes us to the attacks of Satan. We seek to bring people a message that they desperately need, but they usually don't appreciate what we are doing. Sometimes they hate us for it; and some of those who do turn to the Lord turn back after a short time. Results don't come as quickly as we had hoped, and the results that we do see are often less dramatic than we anticipated. It's easy to begin asking whether it's really worth it all.
In this area also, Paul uses the image of a farmer sowing his field. Farming is hard work, but if a farmer becomes weary and gives up, he will not have anything to reap. He tells us not to become weary in doing good, "for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." When we begin to lose heart, when we become weary with doing good, we need to remind ourselves of two things: 1) the harvest will come at the proper time. That time is in God's hands, and it is not up to us. If I want to have potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it won't do me much good to plant potatoes in my garden today. The harvest will come at the proper time, the time that God has ordained for such things. It is the same in the spiritual realm; God has set the time for the harvest, and we must await His time. 2) We will only reap a harvest if we do not give up. If we become weary and disgruntled with the whole thing and throw in the towel, we will not reap a harvest.
Because we are certain of the harvest, Paul urges us to do good. And he qualifies this in three ways. First, he says we are to do good "as we have opportunity." Rather than waiting for a special calling or dreaming of some dramatic way of serving God, we are to seize those opportunities that present themselves to us each day. There are plenty of opportunities to serve God and our neighbor if only we pay attention and seek to meet those needs that present themselves to us. The second thing he says is that we are to be indiscriminate in doing good to others. We are to do good to all people. But, thirdly, we are especially to do good to those of the household of faith.
Why does Paul add this last phrase, that we are especially to do good to those of the household of faith? I think there are two reasons for this. For one thing, we have a special commitment to those closest to us. Paul describes the church as the household of faith, comparing the church to a family. Our families have a special claim on us, and if we are not doing good to those who are closest to us, whose needs we are most aware of, we are being negligent. Caring for those in the body of Christ is in the same category; we have a special obligation to those in the body, and they have a special claim on our good works.
But I think there is something more. It is often easier to do good to people from a distance. Eugene Peterson calls this "Afghanistanitus, the idea that the real opportunities for significant acts of giving are in faraway places or extreme situations. Most of us want to be generous with our lives, but we are waiting for a worthily dramatic occasion" (Traveling Light, p. 181). Listen to what he says about this passage. "Paul doesn't direct our attention to those who are close to home because they are more deserving but because they are there, and he knows that the biggest deterrent to the drudgery of caring for an everyday friend is the dreaming of helping an exotic stranger. Giving from a distance requires less of us -- less involvement, less compassion. It is easier to write out a check for a starving child halfway around the world than to share the burden of our next-door neighbor who talks too much" (pp. 181-82). He goes on to tell this story: a U.S. Embassy official was murdered attempting to deliver a load of American junk food to the drought-ridden African land of Kush. The man's wife later reflects: "I've forgotten a lot about Don... actually I didn't see that much of him. He was always trying to help people. But he only liked to help people he didn't know" (p. 182). This story is from a novel, but I've heard real-life stories that were worse. Paul has exhorted us to do good as we have opportunity, and we have opportunities every day to do good to those who are closest to us. If our experience of God's grace doesn't enable us to do good to those who are closest to us, there is something dreadfully wrong.
At the beginning of the chapter, Paul calls us to “carry each others’ burdens,” because many of the burdens people are given in this life are too heavy to bear alone. God calls us, as part of the same body, to help one another in tangible ways. When we do that, when we seek to restore those who’ve fallen into sin (rather than gossiping about them), and when we seek to carry one another’s burdens, we’re sowing to the Spirit. Just a brief comment about the tension between verses 2 & 5. Notice that the NIV uses a different word in each verse: “Carry each others’ burdens” (v. 2) and “for each one should carry his own load” (v. 5). The translators have done this because there are two different words in the Greek. Here’s a good description of the difference: “There is a kind of burden which falls on a man which comes to him from outside: some crisis, some emergency, some sorrow may descend upon him. It is fulfilling the law of Christ to help everyone who is up against it. But there is a burden which a man must bear himself. The word which Paul uses is the word for a soldier’s pack. There is a duty which none can do for us and a task for which we are personally responsible. There are things which no one, however kind, can do for us, and which, however much we want to, we cannot push off on to someone else” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, pp. 58-59). God has given each of us our own particular load to carry, and He calls us, as part of the body, to bear one another’s burdens. As we serve one another, we’re sowing to the Spirit. When we refuse, and when we engage in gossip rather than seeking to restore those who’ve fallen into sin, we’re sowing to the flesh.
A passage like this calls us to examine ourselves. "What kinds of seeds have I been sowing this week?" "What kind of harvest am I going to reap if I continue sowing these seeds for the next 20 or 30 years?" "Am I sowing to the flesh or sowing to the Spirit?" “Am I going to reap a harvest of holiness, or of corruption?”
These are strong words: "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. People reap what they sow." These are sobering words, because very often we are sowing to the flesh and hoping to reap someday a harvest of holiness. Does that describe your life? If so, don't despair. Listen to the message of Hebrews, a letter written to Christians who were floundering: "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (4:14-16). At the throne of grace we receive mercy -- forgiveness for our failures, forgiveness for sowing to the flesh, forgiveness for squandered opportunities for doing good. And we also receive grace -- grace and strength to begin over again, grace to begin ordering our lives around godly habits. If you find yourself convicted and condemned by this passage in Galatians, come boldly to the throne of grace, and be confident that our Great High Priest is delighted to give both grace and mercy.
I’ve spoken to people who’ve tried various things along the way, hoping for an experience that will push them over the edge into a life of more vibrant spirituality. They’ve been told that they need to pray for the Holy Spirit and simply “take it by faith” that God has answered (since He’s promised to give the Spirit and we know He’s faithful to His word). So they’ve prayed for the Holy Spirit and given thanks for the gift in faith. But what are they supposed to do next? After awhile they start thinking that maybe something has gone wrong. Maybe their faith was deficient in some way, or maybe there had been too much doubt mixed in. So they’d try again and take it all by faith. But nothing ever happened. These prayers made no difference at all in their spiritual life. Some have heard that what they need is to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. So they’ve prayed and had others lay hands on them. Many of them have had uplifting experiences in this way, but they’ve continued to struggle with living out their Christian lives. Many of them have gone from one spiritual high to another, but there seems to be no connection between these spiritual highs and their relationships with others at home and in the workplace.
J.I. Packer tells about experiencing a period of intense frustration in his early Christian life. He desperately wanted to grow; he wanted to be closer to God, and he kept hearing teachers who promised that if he had the right experience it would all happen more-or-less automatically. So he sought these experiences and prayed intensely for them. But nothing happened, no matter how much he prayed and believed. Here’s what he says: “At that time I did not know that Harry Ironside, sometime pastor of Moody Memorial Church, Chicago, once drove himself into a full-scale mental breakdown through trying to get into the higher life as I was trying to get into it.... All I knew was that the expected experience was not coming. The technique was not working. Why not? Well, since the teaching declared that everything depends on consecration being total, the fault had to lie in me.... I became fairly frantic” (Introduction to The Mortification of Sin, by John Owen, pp. 10-11).
All these promises and techniques don’t tell people what they need to know. They need to know how to order their lives to grow into the likeness of Jesus Christ, and all the advice they receive tells them that if they find the right experience, they will begin to live the Christian life more-or-less automatically. All the formulas are saying pretty-much the same thing, that the key to a deeper Christian life is entering into the right experience. And it’s true that we do need to experience more of God. But our experiences of God take place within the context of discipleship, as we walk with God in the mundane realities that confront us each day. There is no experience that is going to produce the sort of automatic discipleship that so many promise. It’s not going to happen. Packer rightly concludes that “this higher life as described is a will-o’-the-wisp, an unreality that no one has ever laid hold of at all, and that those who testify to their experience in these terms really, if unwittingly, distort what has happened to them” (p. 10).
According to Paul, Christian discipleship is about sowing the right kinds of seeds. If we want to grow as Christians, our primary need is not a particular experience. What we need is direction in learning to develop godly habits which over time will bear fruit. Paul compares this to a farmer sowing a field. If a farmer neglects to sow anything at all, he will reap a harvest of weeds. If he sows wheat, he can’t expect to reap a harvest of corn (and if he does he will be sadly disappointed). Growing in godliness is very much like this: we will reap what we sow, and if we neglect to sow or if we sow the wrong sorts of things, we will be disappointed with the results.
Notice how he introduces this idea in verse 6: "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked." He is not content to simply state his idea; he arrests our attention first with this strong warning. "Do not be deceived." He's concerned that this is an area where we are likely to be deceived, so he begins by warning us. And many are deceived about this. Our natural tendency is to be careless and to give little thought to the kinds of seeds we're sowing. Or we consistently sow one kind of seed and expect to harvest something better. It is easy to begin thinking that because God is merciful and forgiving, as Paul has been stressing throughout this letter, we don't have to worry about the consequences of our actions. We are saved by grace, so it's really not such a big deal if we indulge in little sins. It's easy to begin thinking that God's forgiveness frees us from concern about the natural consequences of our actions. It's tempting to develop the mentality that we can "get away with it," because God is merciful and forgiving. Paul reminds us that we are deceiving ourselves, and that we will, inevitably, reap what we sow.
Then he adds to this: "God cannot be mocked." Mocking God here is not ridiculing or making light of Him, but seeking to outwit Him by evading His laws. We try to mock God when we show reverence for Him in our words, but live in total disregard for Him, when our way of life is an implicit rejection of the Lordship of the Spirit. We seek to mock God when our conduct in private contradicts our public profession of allegiance to Christ. Some of the translations read: "God is not mocked." This is a more literal translation, but it means the same thing. Paul's point is that we will not be successful in our attempts to mock God. Ananias and Sapphira, in Acts 5, tried to mock God. They sold some land, and pretended to be giving the whole sum to the church when, in fact, they had kept back part of it for themselves. They were free to keep all or part of the money; the problem was that they tried to "fake it." They pretended to be something they were not. In most cases, the consequences are not so immediate. It may even seem, for a while, that we are succeeding. But in the end we will reap what we have been sowing. If we’re trying to mock God, Paul tells us, we cannot possibly succeed.
So, if we want to grow in godliness, we need to be concerned with the kind of seeds we're sowing. Paul applies this principle in two areas in the following verses. In verse 8, he applies it to our personal growth in holiness, and in verses 9-10 he applies it in the area of good works (we’ll also consider verses 1-5 in connection with these verses).
Paul points to two possibilities in the area of personal holiness: either we are sowing to the flesh or to the Spirit. Remember what we saw in the last passage: The flesh, or sinful nature, as it reads in the NIV, refers to the whole person in rebellion against God. Living in the flesh is living within the limited perspective of a world that is alienated from the life of God. “The man whose horizon is limited by the flesh is by that very fact opposed to God.... The flesh in this sense denotes the whole personality of man as organized in the wrong direction, as directed to earthly pursuits rather than the service of God” (New Bible Dictionary, p. 371). When we’re living according to the flesh, we are at the center, and everything revolves around our own desires. Living by the Spirit is living under God’s lordship, with Him at the center of our lives, and living by the flesh is living for ourselves.
John Stott was the pastor of a large Anglican church in London for many years and has had a very wide impact through his books. Martyn Lloyd-Jones also had a long pastorate in London, and the two men were personal friends. But they had major disagreements about how evangelical Christians should relate to their denominations, and because they were both very influential leaders their disagreement was widely known. And, of course, people tended to assume that these men saw each other as rivals. Lloyd-Jones died in 1981, and Stott tells about visiting him near the end of his life: “On arrival, he could not have been more affable and welcoming.... I told him that I had 2 main reasons for asking to call on him. First, because I had a strong admiration and affection for him... and was sorry we saw so little of one another. Secondly, in my travels people ask me how he is, and I have to say that I have not seen him lately. Worse, people say they have heard we are not on speaking terms with one another. ‘Oh I know, it is absurd. People are very mischievous. They can’t distinguish between principles and personalities” (David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith 1939-1981, by Iain H Murray, p. 768). They had major disagreements, but they were able to recognize and love one another as brethren in the Lord. The normal thing would have been to treat one another as rivals. But both men had spent many years sowing to the Spirit, and they didn’t respond to each other according to the world’s pattern. They weren’t at odds with each other.
Here’s what Stott says about this passage: "This is a vitally important and much neglected principle of holiness. We are not the helpless victims of our nature, temperament and environment. On the contrary, what we become depends largely on how we behave; our character is shaped by our conduct.... To `sow to the flesh' is to pander to it, to cosset, cuddle and stroke it, instead of crucifying it. The seeds we sow are largely thoughts and deeds. Every time we allow our mind to harbour a grudge, nurse a grievance, entertain an impure fantasy, or wallow in self-pity, we are sowing to the flesh. Every time we linger in bad company whose insidious influence we know we cannot resist, every time we lie in bed when we ought to be up and praying, every time we read pornographic literature, every time we take a risk which strains our self-control, we are sowing, sowing, sowing to the flesh. Some Christians sow to the flesh every day and wonder why they do not reap holiness. Holiness is a harvest; whether we reap it or not depends almost entirely on what and where we sow" (Only One Way: The Message of Galatians, pp. 169-70).
I think we often go wrong in this area by simply asking the wrong sorts of questions. We want to know just what is permissible for a Christian; how much can we get away with? We approach it as a legal question. "Am I breaking any law, or will I come under God's judgment for doing this?" Instead, we need to ask, "what sorts of seeds am I sowing?" "If I continue regularly in this activity for the next 10 or 20 years, what sort of person will I become?" "Am I sowing to the flesh or to the Spirit?" "Is this activity moving me in the direction I want my life to go?" If we are sowing to the flesh, we will reap corruption, that is, we will experience a process of increasing moral and spiritual decay. If we are sowing to the Spirit, we will reap eternal life, that is, we will experience a growing fellowship with God. “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (John 17:3).
But Christian discipleship is not only a matter of personal holiness. Paul turns next to our work of serving others in the name of Christ, and urges us to not grow weary in well-doing. It’s easy to become discouraged; we’re often tempted to give up. “What’s the point of it all?” we sometimes wonder. Paul was aware of this danger. He had seen it happen to others. John Mark, for example, the author of the Gospel of Mark, worked on Paul's missionary team for a while, but then, according to Acts 13:13 he "left them to return to Jerusalem." We live and work in a fallen world; faithfulness to God exposes us to the attacks of Satan. We seek to bring people a message that they desperately need, but they usually don't appreciate what we are doing. Sometimes they hate us for it; and some of those who do turn to the Lord turn back after a short time. Results don't come as quickly as we had hoped, and the results that we do see are often less dramatic than we anticipated. It's easy to begin asking whether it's really worth it all.
In this area also, Paul uses the image of a farmer sowing his field. Farming is hard work, but if a farmer becomes weary and gives up, he will not have anything to reap. He tells us not to become weary in doing good, "for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." When we begin to lose heart, when we become weary with doing good, we need to remind ourselves of two things: 1) the harvest will come at the proper time. That time is in God's hands, and it is not up to us. If I want to have potatoes for dinner tomorrow, it won't do me much good to plant potatoes in my garden today. The harvest will come at the proper time, the time that God has ordained for such things. It is the same in the spiritual realm; God has set the time for the harvest, and we must await His time. 2) We will only reap a harvest if we do not give up. If we become weary and disgruntled with the whole thing and throw in the towel, we will not reap a harvest.
Because we are certain of the harvest, Paul urges us to do good. And he qualifies this in three ways. First, he says we are to do good "as we have opportunity." Rather than waiting for a special calling or dreaming of some dramatic way of serving God, we are to seize those opportunities that present themselves to us each day. There are plenty of opportunities to serve God and our neighbor if only we pay attention and seek to meet those needs that present themselves to us. The second thing he says is that we are to be indiscriminate in doing good to others. We are to do good to all people. But, thirdly, we are especially to do good to those of the household of faith.
Why does Paul add this last phrase, that we are especially to do good to those of the household of faith? I think there are two reasons for this. For one thing, we have a special commitment to those closest to us. Paul describes the church as the household of faith, comparing the church to a family. Our families have a special claim on us, and if we are not doing good to those who are closest to us, whose needs we are most aware of, we are being negligent. Caring for those in the body of Christ is in the same category; we have a special obligation to those in the body, and they have a special claim on our good works.
But I think there is something more. It is often easier to do good to people from a distance. Eugene Peterson calls this "Afghanistanitus, the idea that the real opportunities for significant acts of giving are in faraway places or extreme situations. Most of us want to be generous with our lives, but we are waiting for a worthily dramatic occasion" (Traveling Light, p. 181). Listen to what he says about this passage. "Paul doesn't direct our attention to those who are close to home because they are more deserving but because they are there, and he knows that the biggest deterrent to the drudgery of caring for an everyday friend is the dreaming of helping an exotic stranger. Giving from a distance requires less of us -- less involvement, less compassion. It is easier to write out a check for a starving child halfway around the world than to share the burden of our next-door neighbor who talks too much" (pp. 181-82). He goes on to tell this story: a U.S. Embassy official was murdered attempting to deliver a load of American junk food to the drought-ridden African land of Kush. The man's wife later reflects: "I've forgotten a lot about Don... actually I didn't see that much of him. He was always trying to help people. But he only liked to help people he didn't know" (p. 182). This story is from a novel, but I've heard real-life stories that were worse. Paul has exhorted us to do good as we have opportunity, and we have opportunities every day to do good to those who are closest to us. If our experience of God's grace doesn't enable us to do good to those who are closest to us, there is something dreadfully wrong.
At the beginning of the chapter, Paul calls us to “carry each others’ burdens,” because many of the burdens people are given in this life are too heavy to bear alone. God calls us, as part of the same body, to help one another in tangible ways. When we do that, when we seek to restore those who’ve fallen into sin (rather than gossiping about them), and when we seek to carry one another’s burdens, we’re sowing to the Spirit. Just a brief comment about the tension between verses 2 & 5. Notice that the NIV uses a different word in each verse: “Carry each others’ burdens” (v. 2) and “for each one should carry his own load” (v. 5). The translators have done this because there are two different words in the Greek. Here’s a good description of the difference: “There is a kind of burden which falls on a man which comes to him from outside: some crisis, some emergency, some sorrow may descend upon him. It is fulfilling the law of Christ to help everyone who is up against it. But there is a burden which a man must bear himself. The word which Paul uses is the word for a soldier’s pack. There is a duty which none can do for us and a task for which we are personally responsible. There are things which no one, however kind, can do for us, and which, however much we want to, we cannot push off on to someone else” (William Barclay, The Letters to the Galatians and Ephesians, pp. 58-59). God has given each of us our own particular load to carry, and He calls us, as part of the body, to bear one another’s burdens. As we serve one another, we’re sowing to the Spirit. When we refuse, and when we engage in gossip rather than seeking to restore those who’ve fallen into sin, we’re sowing to the flesh.
A passage like this calls us to examine ourselves. "What kinds of seeds have I been sowing this week?" "What kind of harvest am I going to reap if I continue sowing these seeds for the next 20 or 30 years?" "Am I sowing to the flesh or sowing to the Spirit?" “Am I going to reap a harvest of holiness, or of corruption?”
These are strong words: "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. People reap what they sow." These are sobering words, because very often we are sowing to the flesh and hoping to reap someday a harvest of holiness. Does that describe your life? If so, don't despair. Listen to the message of Hebrews, a letter written to Christians who were floundering: "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need" (4:14-16). At the throne of grace we receive mercy -- forgiveness for our failures, forgiveness for sowing to the flesh, forgiveness for squandered opportunities for doing good. And we also receive grace -- grace and strength to begin over again, grace to begin ordering our lives around godly habits. If you find yourself convicted and condemned by this passage in Galatians, come boldly to the throne of grace, and be confident that our Great High Priest is delighted to give both grace and mercy.
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