The metaphor of a farmer to illustrate the diligent and hardworking nature required in serving Christ. It emphasizes that Christian service is not an easy way out but demanding work, akin to the labor of a farmer who toils through all seasons. The text highlights that just as a farmer is the first to enjoy the fruits of their labor, faithful servants of Christ can expect appropriate rewards and satisfaction in seeing God's work through their lives. Furthermore, the sermon draws parallels between farming principles like sowing and reaping and moral and ethical conduct, urging believers to sow to the Spirit for eternal life rather than to the flesh, and to persevere with patience, trusting that God will bring the harvest in due season.
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In fact, it's a good day for anything out there, I think. This is a marvelous, marvelous spring day, and I think that you people are spoiled. You like that, don't you? I don't find people complaining. In fact, I talked to my wife last night, and she said it got up to sixty-one degrees in Dubuque, Iowa yesterday. They thought they had a heat wave. Could hardly believe their good fortune in having a sunny day so early in the season, sixty-one degrees. So it's happening all over. You know, it's a marvelous thing. God told his ancient people that the springtime and harvest, the turning of the seasons would not fail as long as God's purposes on the earth continue.
And I'm one of those people growing up in the Midwest on the farm that really not only do you watch the weather a lot when you live on the farm because so much of course of your way of life is touched by and related to the weather but I learned to appreciate the turning of the seasons and then when I saw in the scripture that really the turning of the seasons are evidence of God's faithfulness just like the rainbow the tokens of God's faithfulness the reminders of God's faithfulness these build into the very elements of around us. And to me it's a fascinating thing to see how God faithfully keeps this old world spinning and keeps the sun sunning and all of these things that are so fundamental to our very way of life here, how grateful we are to God for His mercies, temporal mercies.
Now this morning we're going to look at yet another metaphor for the serving Christian And I trust learn some helpful lessons or rethink, as I'm sure it is for most of you, some of the important lessons that God teaches us in His Word through these word pictures. And today we want to look at the metaphor of the farmer. We're going to read again in Second Timothy two, so you'll be able to find your way easily to that passage. The Bible just sort of falls open there now, doesn't it? We've looked at this several times this week. We'll read the opening verses again for the context. Second Timothy two, verse one, You therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus, and the things which you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses.
These entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. Suffer hardship with me as a good soldier of Christ Jesus. No soldier in active service entangles himself with the affairs of everyday life. so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier. And also, if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules. By the way, we'll come back to that tomorrow morning, God willing. Now, verse six, the hardworking farmer ought to be the first to receive his share of the crops. Consider what I say, for the Lord will give you understanding in everything.
Again, we'll pause and seek God's blessing. Father, we quiet our hearts before you again now to seek your ministry to our hearts by your spirit. Give us, we pray, a profitable time as we study the scriptures together. We ask this in the Savior's lovely name. Amen. Now there's a word in the New Testament, if you're using the King James, that speaks of the metaphor we're looking at today. And that is the old English word husbandmen. It's interesting how words change in their usage over a period of time. This is certainly one of the words that has changed in its usage.
I almost never hear the word used in the way it's used in the King James these days. The word husband has come to have a very different meaning. The word husband we think of in the domestic realm. A person who is married to a wife is a husband. And that's about the only way that we see the use of that term. But the word husbandment in the King James is a very good term. It's a very specific term. The synonym, the word we would tend to use in these days, is used in more modern versions, is the word farmer. I remember, I guess I told you this, but I remind you that I started out my college career at the University of Missouri at Veterinary Medicine.
And one of the courses that I took in the pre-veterinary curriculum was poultry husbandry. But they called it in those days. And I will never forget some of the interesting comments that I got from my friends when they heard I was taking a course, the title of which was poultry husbandry. so as late as my own lifetime we have used the word husband or husbandry in the sense of farming it's not all that far in history that it was used this way but that's the word that you will find repeated in your king james version that speaks of some important things that god wants us to learn from the agricultural setting of course you will also find the expressions in the new testament of sowing and reaping, sowing not in the sense that my wife loves to sow with the needle or with a machine, but sowing in the sense of planting seed or planting plants.
Sowing and reaping are also concepts which appear in a number of strategic places in the New Testament. And the terminology of the farmer, the language of sowing, the language of reaping really is used all through the Scripture. but specifically in the epistles we find it used to describe and to teach us some important things that should characterize your life and mine as believers who are active in serving the Lord. And I hope that it'll be profitable for us to look at this together. Now the statement that Paul makes here to Timothy in chapter two and verse six reminds us first of all of some important basic truths One of them, I believe, difficult for us to understand.
First of all, Paul talks about the hardworking farmer. Did you see it there in verse six? The hardworking farmer. And I want to tell you, farming is hard work. And many of you know that. I grew up on a small farm, a small dairy farm. And for most of my early years of life, I assumed that dairy farming was really a form of slavery in fact we had the kind of dairy farm that was big enough to involve a lot lot lot of work for example I milk fifty five to sixty cows every night and every morning through my my youth and that's a lot of work I want to tell you folks even if you have machines it's a lot of work and they Of course, need to be milked every morning and every night, not only seven days a week, not only about fifty-two and a quarter weeks out of the year, and we weren't big enough to employ people to do it for us.
And so we had to do it all ourselves, and there were times when I felt very sorry for myself. I wanted to play football in high school so desperately, but you don't stay after school and play football when you've got fifty-five or sixty cows to milk at home. When I was in high school, I couldn't remember a day that I had slept past four o'clock. I could not remember a day in my life. My dad always used to say that about the time I started taking milk out of a bottle, I started putting it into a bottle. And that's just about true because we had a dairy farm, one of these small dairies that operated in the outskirts of St.
Louis. In those days, there were a lot of those little dairies surrounding all the major cities. My father was blind. I was the oldest boy, and he desperately needed me as his hands and his eyes. And so I remember the hard work of farming. And that's what Paul says here is the first lesson we need to learn. The service of Christ is work. And I think we should acknowledge that to be so. In all the world of religion, there is a perspective on preaching and being a pastor and whatnot, which is really quite nice, quite idyllic.
I remember hearing my brother-in-law one day go through a terrible shock. He was in engineering at Washington University, and he had a friend who was in the same program that he was. They were facing a heavy midterm in one of the very technical courses they were taking in electrical engineering. And this fellow was worried that he was not going to pass this test and thus flunk out of the program of electrical engineering. And so he told my brother-in-law, well, he said, that's all right. If I flunk out of engineering, I can always go into the ministry. And that sort of blew my brother-in-law's mind.
If I flunk out of engineering, I can always go into the ministry. That's an easy way out. It's an easy way out. It's a nice life. It's a soft life. I tell you, folks, as I read the scriptures, I don't see that. No, Paul says here, the one who would serve Christ is a hardworking farmer. The service of Christ is worthy of our best efforts and the discipline of our minds in the study of the word, the discipline of our lives in touching other lives, It is work. It is work. And I think that the Word of God and the service of Christ are worthy of our very best efforts. One of the things we learn at Emmaus, for example, is that a lot of young people come to Emmaus thinking that it's sort of like Sunday school or like camp.
It's just going to be fun. And then suddenly they get into the clutches of our faculty and realize that they are expected to study and to do research and to learn the vast dimensions of biblical truth that is available in the wealth of things in the library and to discipline their minds in hours and hours of hard work. And some of them are very disillusioned because it's not just Sunday school. And we have to remind them again and again that it just so happens that we believe the Word of God is worthy of our very best efforts. And that the work of study, and you remember in the Old Testament, we see much study, Solomon said, is a weariness to the flesh.
Study can be work. Prayer can be work. We don't work hard enough at prayer. For most Christians, prayer is much too casual and much too infrequent. the ministry of prayer. I have known prayer warriors that work, that labor in prayer. It involves work in preparing to minister to the Lord's people. And that's why Paul says in First Timothy five, let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially those who labor. Did you see that word in word and in teaching? I fear that a lot of assemblies languish because no one is working hard in their studies and the people of God are only getting skim milk in their spiritual diet because there's a lack of someone willing to labor in the word especially Paul said those who labor in the word of God and in prayer If you're going to really feed the Lord's people, I don't care whether it's a neighborhood Bible class in your home or whether it's a Sunday school class or whether it's a ministry from the pulpit, if you're going to really feed the people of
God, it's going to take some work, some work. And that's the first thing Paul teaches us here in this interesting metaphor of the farmer. It's the hard-working farmer. Remember the Proverbs remind us that farmers who are slovenly, and there are some that appear in the Proverbs, who let their fields grow up with weeds, who don't get up early enough in the morning to get the job done, who sleep in the time of harvest. Have you ever noticed reading through the Proverbs how many warnings there are about slovenly farming? And it can happen.
I've seen farms that are overgrown with weeds. If you don't do well on the farm, if you're lazy and you don't serve the Lord well if you're not hard-working farmer spiritually notice the second thing he says here it's not only the hard-working farmer but he says the hard-working farmer ought to be the first to receive share of the crops it's the language of sometimes obligation but in this case of that which is appropriate that which is fitting and what he's describing here now is something that ought to be it's something that is totally appropriate and totally fitting what is that well he ought to be Paul says the first to receive his share of the crops I find that a lot of people don't really enter into this very much Maybe partly because they didn't grow up on the farm and don't understand this language.
Many partly because the concept is not an easy one for us to grasp. So let's work at it a minute. The hardworking farmer, Paul says, ought to be. It's appropriate. It is legitimate. It is proper that the hardworking farmer be the first to share in his crops. Illustrate that. We used to raise wheat in some places. and in a grain of in a field of wheat there were always those spots that because of the soil and the moisture in the soil and whatnot the the we had a low vessel soil in our farms and the condition of the soil varied within even on one farm and there were always those spots where the grain was a little heavier where it ripened a little bit earlier you could just look over the field and see those spots and it was wonderful to be able to just walk carefully out of there and strip off the heads of the grain in your fingers and roll it in your hands and blow the chaff out and then eat that soft.
Have you ever eaten ripening grain before it really gets hard when it's still in that soft, milky stage? Oh, it's delicious. Delicious. And you see, many of you have never even tasted that. But a hardworking farmer has that privilege. And Paul says, that's right. That's the way it should be. We always had an archer. And you learn very soon in life that the best peaches are about two-thirds of the way up the tree on the southwest side of the tree. And I'll guarantee you, many of those never make it to market. And I don't need to describe where they went. But Paul said, that's the way it ought to be. Have you ever eaten a tree-ripened peach and the juice literally drips off of your elbow?
Wow, that's marvelous. Now, you can't eat the whole crop. You'd go broke in the farming business if you ate everything. No, no. But he said the hardworking farmer ought to be the first to share the crops. There is an appropriate natural sense in which when you really work hard and get the calluses on your hands and the sweat on your brow, it's totally natural. that you share you enjoy some of those ingredients of the crop when you're picking cherries it's totally appropriate from time to time to pop one into your mouth or whatever you see it's appropriate now what in the world is he teaching us with this language what is he teaching us well there's a commentary I believe on this in Galatians chapter six so turn there for a minute I believe what Paul says in this statement is precisely what he is referring to here in this picture of the farmer.
In Galatians six, he's talking about the ministry of restoration, the difficult but necessary work of ministering to somebody who has sinned, who has committed sin and the consequences are known and life is coming back on them and they've been caught. And they need restoration. And in the process of talking about this, he says in Galatians six, four, but let each one examine his own work. And then he will have reason for boasting in regard to himself alone and not regard to another. When we serve Christ, we don't look for satisfaction by comparing ourselves with others.
It's so humanly natural to do that. There are a lot of ways to illustrate this. In the context of this passage, going to help someone who's in trouble, who's in a mess. They've brought problems on themselves by their own sin and folly. And you go as God's instrument of restoration, the ministry of restoration. And it's very possible that please, how many people are you counseling with? Well, I'm counseling with two or three. Well, I am counseling with at least eight or ten. See? No, no, Paul says that's not it. No, no, you don't look for satisfaction in your service for Christ by comparing yourself with someone else.
Because you see, that only cultivates pride. And he's warned us in the verse before that, that pride can be a terrible pitfall in the ministry of restoration. And when you get near to people, when you touch other lives helpfully, then you learn some of the personal things they go through. One of the marks of the fallen nature of man is that that makes you feel very important. And Paul warns us about the pride problem in a help ministry becoming proud because you know personal things about other people. No, no, Paul says. That's deadly. So watch that ugly human pride that rears its head when you learn some personal things about somebody who's in trouble.
No, Paul says that's not where the satisfaction is in serving Christ in this ministry, not by comparing yourself with somebody else. How successful you are as a counselor, how many people you're counseling with, no, no. Paul says, look, you assess your own work. You examine what God has commissioned you to do. You examine the opportunities and the responsibilities God has given to you. Don't compare yourself with others. You look at God's commission, his opportunities given to you, and then you will find, as he puts it here, reason for boasting. Is that true? You know, when people read through the New Testament and find some of Paul's so-called boasting passages, it's easy to misunderstand those.
When he writes to the Galatians, for example, and says that he outstripped others in his devotion, Christ. I take that to be a true statement. After all, the Spirit of God moved him to write it. When he talks about the sufferings and persecutions he'd been through, about the response, the open doors of opportunity that had been given. A great and effectual door of opportunity, he said, has been here. Pray for us. We're in a good work. You know, there is something very satisfying about seeing God work through your own life. Not that you compare yourself with others. But when there's evidence in your own life that God is actually working through you, there's something very satisfying in this.
And a hardworking farmer needs to learn to find a measure of satisfaction in the fruitfulness that God accomplishes right before your very eyes. And if you reach out and touch other lives, you'll hurt with them as you draw near to bear one another's burdens. you'll feel the burden and you will weep with those who weep but when God begins to work in their lives and there's response and and there is restoration you'll be the first to cry tears of joy you'll be the first to see it why because you were close and you were involved there is tremendous encouragement in seeing God at work in the lives around you.
I feel sorry for people who do not see that. I know people who have served God in tough places, sometimes for years and years before seeing any visible results. But I want to tell you, when they do come, it is tremendously encouraging. And Paul is not saying here that we get our whole life perspective in self-gratification. No, we serve sacrificially as unto the Lord, like the hardworking farmer. But he also says it is appropriate that the hardworking farmer is the first to enjoy a share of the crops. And we need to learn that proper sense of biblical gratitude and appreciation for the evidence that God gives us of his work through our lives.
It can be a tremendously encouraging thing for believers to have that right biblical perspective, not comparing ourselves with someone else, but by assessing what God has given us to do and then allowing ourselves the luxury, if you please, of being grateful and thankful to God for the blessing that he is accomplishing in those efforts. There is, Paul says, a proper kind of encouragement in this. And I hope you know it. I hope you see it. It's one of the reasons why he says later on, by the way, in Galatians six, verse six, Let each one who is taught with the word share all good things with him who teaches.
Doesn't mean that in the Lord's people we have a mutual back slapping society where we're always flattering each other and buttering each other up. No, no. But it does mean that when people have invested their lives in the service of Christ and they've ministered to you, it is totally appropriate, Paul says, that you let them know that. that you respond in encouragement. I really wonder, as I think of some dear people, I think of people who've served God as Sunday school teachers for years and years and years and years and wonder what it would mean if some parent would come up to them sometime and say, you know, we really appreciate what you're doing for our kids. God bless you. And there's too little of that going on, folks.
Our Lord was quick to commend people. Blessed are you, Simon. Blessed are you. You've got it, Simon. You didn't get that from flesh and blood. My Father revealed that to you. Blessed art thou, son. The Lord was quick to commend the spiritual progress in his disciples. And we can see that kind of encouragement in our own lives if we have this perspective of the hardworking farmer. Now, the next picture I'd like to call your attention to in this whole metaphor... is found again in this chapter we've just been looking at in Galatians six, where Paul uses the language of sowing and reaping.
And in verses seven, eight, nine, and ten, he gives us a very interesting discussion here of what are the important moral principles of the scripture. Sowing and reaping. It's a principle which is discussed first in Genesis chapter one, believe it or not. It's a principle which God has built into the very fabric of human experience. It is one of the major moral issues in all of the Word of God, this basic principle of sowing and reaping. God has built this into the very fabric of our existence. And one of the ways he teaches that is in the metaphor of farming, of farming.
This principle is reflected, for example, in the whole idea of cause and effect, the idea of action and consequence, the idea of decision and result, the if-then principle, for example, of Proverbs chapter two. My son, if you do this, if you seek wisdom, if you cry out for understanding, if then this will be the result, and then you will have good success. And then your life will be kept free from, you see, the if-then principle. And so the language of the Scripture is varied, presenting this same moral principle, but so specific here in, again, the concept of the agricultural setting, sowing and reaping.
Do not be deceived, Paul says, God is not mocked. What you sow, you will also reap. So whether you realize it or not, folks, you're all farmers. In the moral and ethical sense, we are all farmers. We are sowing and we are reaping. And don't kid yourself, God is not mocked. The principle will not fail. God has built it into the very fabric of life. What you sow, you will reap. Now notice some important teachings here. He talks about sowing to the flesh, to our own flesh, he who sows to his own flesh. The word flesh used here in the ethical sense, the old nature, the sinful Adamic nature.
And Paul says, if you sow to that old flesh, if you cater to, if you feed, if you contribute to that, you will reap what? Corruption. Wow, that's an awesome word. It's an awesome word. But he says there is an alternative for Christians, and that is you may sow to not your spirit, but the spirit. Specific articles there. Then from the spirit you will reap all of the glorious dimensions of everlasting life. Now I've mentioned this here before, I think, but you need to understand that in the world they don't have this option. Paul talks in Romans eight about those who are in the flesh.
They cannot please God. They have had it. All they can do is sow to the flesh because they are in the flesh. They are of the flesh, and they don't have any option. But the believer has the option. We, bless God, have the option of sowing to the Spirit and reaping an entirely different harvest in our lives, not corruption, which is all the world can reap, but the glorious dimensions of life eternal. We have an option. I feel sorry for people out in the world. I don't envy them. They should envy me.
I have the option. They don't. But Paul is appealing to us now as Christians, you do have the option. So exercise it in the right way. He who sows to the Spirit, he says, shall from the Spirit reap life everlasting. And so we see here the principle of sowing and reaping in the moral and ethical sense. but also in this passage in the next verses he gives some applications to this and I'd like to take just a couple of minutes here to spell out some of the laws of the harvest I think I've done this before here but let me repeat it because it's important in this context the metaphor of farming brings to mind a number of scriptures that talk about sowing and reaping so let me just summarize some of the laws of the harvest Now, whether you think it in terms of gardening in your vegetable garden, or whether you imagine a farmer in a large farm somewhere in the country, or however you want to look at it in terms of the picture, the metaphor of farming, think of these which are the laws of the harvest.
First of all, one of the things you learn in the scriptures is that you only sow a reek where there's been some sowing. You know, the old idea of spontaneous generation we have learned is just not so. It is just not so. You don't just have a piece of ground somewhere and suddenly there's a corn crop growing there. You're only going to reap corn if you sowed corn. That's the only way you're going to have it in your field. You only reap where there has been sowing. And if you don't sow corn, you're not going to reap corn because you only reap where there's been sown.
The other side of that, of course, is that we reap the same kind. Now, way back in Genesis one, God established the principle when he created plant life after its kind, after its kind, every seed bearing fruit after its kind. When you sow corn, what's going to grow? Wheat? No, no. Corn. Now when you sow soybeans, what's going to grow? Rice? No, no. Soybeans. After its kind, God has built that principle. When you sow to the Spirit, what are you going to reap? Corruption? Well, not honor in your life. You'll reap blessing. You'll reap all the glorious byproducts of everlasting life.
You see, God has built that principle in after its kind. The third principle, a law of the harvest, is that we reap in a different season than we sow. And in various parts of the country, this might be different, but particularly in Iowa, we sow corn and soybeans in the spring, and we reap in the fall. There's always a lag between sowing and reaping. You say, what importance is that? Well, Paul says here in Ephesians Let us not lose heart. We shall reap in due season if we do not faint. You see, the fact that we reap in a different season than we sow means that sometimes we lose the connection.
We forget the association between the harvest and the sowing. And God doesn't want us to forget that connection because it's a vital thing to understand the relationship between sowing and reaping. Whether it is sowing to your own flesh and reaping corruption, or whether it's sowing to the Spirit and re-reeping all the glorious dimensions of life eternal. He wants us to think of that connection. And in the context of Galatians six, when people have sinned and they're caught in their sin, they need to understand that all the suffering and all the misery and all the guilt and all the consequences are related to the fact that they sowed to their own flesh. And they need to know that.
We careful not to lose that connection. Boy, one of the things that characterizes the twentieth century Western civilization is we have found a lot of ingenious ways of trying to tamper with this. And we found ways to either alter the form of the harvest or to delay the harvest of our own sinful behavior. but God is still saying, don't kid yourself, the harvest will come. You see? And I've talked to young people that get involved in sexual sins and fornication, and they're rather proud because pregnancy did not result.
Of course, we have contraceptives now. But is that the only consequence of the sin of fornication? I tell you it isn't. What about a defiled conscience? What about a defiled body? What about what? Oh, you see, we can change the form of the harvest, but we can't change the reality that what you sow to your own flesh, Paul says, you're going to reap in corruption. And we may have all kinds of gadgets and ways to tamper with this relationship, but Paul says, don't forget that it's there. Because there is a lag in time, but don't forget that what you sow You will reap.
And bless God, the same is true in spiritual things. The same is true in spiritual things. We'll come back to that in just a moment. Another law of the harvest is, of course, that we reap more than we sow. When you plant a grain of corn or a grain of wheat, the Lord in his parable said, some soils will yield thirty, some sixty-fold, some a hundredfold. You don't plant one grain and harvest one grain. If you did, life on earth would have ceased long ago because You're going to eat that one grain. What are you going to plant next year? No. God has built this principle into the very nature of things. You reap more than you sow. You plant one grain of corn and the saw comes up and you will probably get, if you're in Iowa, two ears and each one may have a hundred or two hundred grains on it.
Wow. You see, you always reap more than you sow. And that's true even of sowing to the flesh. why me why this I hear people in the counseling situation complaining life has dumped on them fingers so terrible well I only was just a little white lie I only whatever you see oh but the principle is you always reap more than you sow the same is true and so into the spirit and even little efforts even the cup of cold water given in the name of Christ what is the harvest oh my goodness it's marvelous why because we reap more than we sow but it's also true that we reap in proportion as we sow as Paul says in second Corinthians eight nine which is another one of the sowing reaping passages which you need to look at which we won't have time to do today if you sow sparingly you'll reap sparingly if you sow bountifully you will reap bountifully so both principles are there It is true that we reap more than we sow.
It is also true that we reap in proportion as we sow. And if you have twenty acres of land out there and you till the soil and go out there with a handful of corn seed, you're not going to get a very big crop. So don't go out and buy a hundred thousand dollar harvester if you've only planted a handful of seed in twenty acres of land. Now, it is true that each of those seeds will produce more than one seed. But you're not going to get a big crop if you've only got a handful of seed. You get out there with eight or nine pecks or bushels of seed, and then you might get a harvest, you see. If you sow sparingly, you will reap sparingly. And that's why the Scriptures tell us when it comes to the service of Christ, pull out all the stops and be a hardworking farmer.
Because if you sow bountifully, you will reap bountifully, Paul says. A couple of more lessons that we learn in the laws of the harvest. One is that we reap the harvest of good only if we persevere, but the harvest of evil comes all by itself. Think of your garden. You plant radishes, you plant spinach, and then you just let it go. Well, I'll tell you what had happened up in Iowa. You let a garden go, you just forget it, and you're not going to have much. though there'll be plenty of weeds you don't have to cultivate weeds you don't have to fertilize them they just grow all by themselves but if you want the good stuff to grow you'd better persevere you'd better cultivate and water and garden you see there's a curse on this old scene and it's true in our human existence as well as in the nature around us the harvest of good you must persevere remember Paul says we will reap in due season if if we fate not if you persevere in the good in serving Christ you will reap the harvest of evil comes
all by itself we could talk a lot more about that think about it it's an important principle of harvest one more the law of the harvest is that we can't do anything about last year's harvest but we can do something about this year's harvest we had a very wet summer in Iowa It wasn't only the flooding of the river that the media focused on, but all through the area we had so much rain, so much rain, so much rain that farmers who didn't plant early enough ended up with a very poor corn crop. It looked impressive, but the corn was soft, the grain was soft.
We didn't get enough sunshine hours to get hard grain with a lot of nutrients in it. And people like my brother who were farming in Iowa felt very sorry that they didn't get their crop in earlier. And you can't do anything about that now. That's all history. The late sowing last summer, the disappointing harvest in October, November, it's all over. You can't change it. It's facts. But I'll tell you there are farmers saying this year, I'm going to be out on that ground the first of May. I'm not going to wait till the first of June because it'll be too late. You say, you can't do anything about last year's harvest, but you can do something about this year's harvest.
And that's one of the great things about the dynamics of life in Christ. Remember what God said to ancient Israel? Even after his judgment come upon him because of his displeasure with them in their sin, in the post-exilic prophets, he reminded them, look, I can restore. And that which the canker worm has eaten, I can change all of that now. You see, it can be different now. It can be different now. You can't change the past, but it can be different now. And you can sow to the Spirit, and from their Spirit, reap all those wonderful dimensions of life eternal. And so these lessons that we learn from the harvest and from the farming scene are very, very important.
Let me just quickly mention to others, and then we will conclude, that you might want to look at on yourself. Look at the interesting reference not only in second Corinthians nine where he's talking about financial stewardship and giving to this project of needy saints over in Judea and the principles that he teaches there with the same metaphor of sowing and reaping. They're important principles in terms of our financial stewardship. Think of the important lesson we learn in first Corinthians fifteen with this same metaphor of sowing and reaping and next time you go to a funeral remember Paul says you're sowing that body and just like a grain that you put in the soil it's going to die and decompose but that's not the end there's going to be life coming out of that and he gives a number of contrasts that we need to think about at funerals because This language of sowing and reaping is also used to teach us and to encourage us with regard to our own mortal bodies and the fact of
physical death and burial and a glorious anticipation of resurrection. And one of the ways that's taught in the Scripture is with this same metaphor of sowing and reaping. Think of the statement in First Corinthians nine. where in terms of the support of Christian workers, Paul says, look, we sowed spiritual things to you. It's only natural that we're going to reap material things. And think of the statement of James chapter three, where James says, peacemakers sow in peace, and the fruit they reap is the fruit of righteousness. Boy, I tell you, folks, we always need this. We need peacemakers.
There's enough war being made among the people of God. James says, you sow in peace and you will reap fruit in righteousness. And then the final thing I'd call you to ponder is the illustration of farming from James chapter five. The farmer waits patiently, he says, for the crop. How does he apply it there? You be patient under the coming of the Lord. Be like that patient farmer who sows his crop and then patiently waits. He knows it's going to take some time. You can't hurry the process of growth and the maturity of the crop.
You just wait for it. You know that you're not going to harvest your corn in June. In Iowa, you're not going to harvest it until at least late September and probably October or November. You know that. So be patient. Now he says, Christian, Be patient under the coming of the Lord. There are a lot of things that you do now in the service of Christ that really won't manifest themselves in terms of the fruitfulness until that day of Christ. Be patient. Strengthen your hearts into the coming of the Lord. It will be a great harvest, folks, when we, from the perspective of eternity, see all that God caused to happen through our simple feeble efforts in his service.
And then, the scriptures say, every man shall have praise of God. So be encouraged, folks. There's a harvest that's coming. And a lot of the things that you have done in the service of Christ, you haven't really yet seen the full fruition of that. James says, be patient. Be patient until the coming of the Lord. That'll be a great day. It'd be a day of harvesting, a day of reaping, a day of seeing the evidence of the full blessing of God that came that we may not even have seen in this life. I was telling someone last night about my son-in-law, got saved out of a Roman Catholic background, and boy, the Lord really saved him.
And in part of the aftermath and all of the witnessing to his family and everything, his mother gave him a Bible. that her mother had. She said, I think maybe you've got the same thing my mother had. Here, you might like to have her Bible. And so Jim's mother gave him his grandmother's Bible, and in thumbing through it, he read her written statement, I pray every day that my grandchildren will come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. And she was long in her grave before it happened. but it happened this grandson of hers came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ and whether she knows that now I don't know but she will in the day of resurrection and so James says be patient unto the coming just like a farmer waits for the time of harvest you sow sow to the spirit so bound to flee Serve the Lord diligently.
Be a hardworking farmer. And then patiently wait. The harvest will come. And we will see the fruitfulness of that which God accomplished. Obviously, it's God who gives the increase. We know that from First Corinthians three. One plants and other waters. God gives the increase. See, the scriptures are full of this metaphor, aren't they? But someday, James says, be patient. until the coming of the Lord. And then there will be the harvest. Father, thank you for your word. It gives us encouragement. This metaphor encourages us to work hard in the service of Christ.
This metaphor encourages us to be diligent and make sure we are sowing to the flesh, not to the flesh, but to the Spirit. And this metaphor encourages us to be patient for the harvest. We look forward to that day, perhaps very soon, when our Lord will come and we will stand before Him and see evidence of what He was able to accomplish even through our most feeble efforts. Help us, Father, to be diligent servants of Christ, to be hardworking farmers. For the sake of our Lord Jesus, we pray. Amen.